Linking Hate Crime and Democracy Crime to Climate Change Crime

1. Introduction

Green criminology has emerged as a certain sub-discipline of criminology, studying violations of environmental morality, environmental ethics, animal rights, nature rights and eco-justice committed by powerful institutions and organisations as well as ordinary people (Lynch, 1990/2006; Beirne & South, 2007; Brisman & South, 2013; South, 2014; Nobles, 2019). With focus on sustainable development and climate change, green criminology has also come to study social justice (Benton, 2007).

Ecocide is a particular kind of environmental crime, often related to climate change and other transnational environmental crimes (South, 2014; White, 2011, 2018). It refers to unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that they are likely to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment (Proedrou & Pournara, 2025). With ecocide, particularly climate change, green criminology’s focus on criminal acts and criminals has changed from single companies to large multilateral corporations and even nation states as offenders (White, 2011, 2018; Brisman & South, 2013; Ruggiero & South, 2013; Kramer, 2014). In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) published an advisory opinion outlining the legal responsibility and obligations of nation states to reduce climate change (ICJ, 2025). It also stresses the legal consequences for nation states that, by their acts or omissions, cause significant harm to the climate system, the environment, states and/or peoples and individuals, including future generations.

In parallel with criminalisation of climate system harms, we are witnessing a “third wave of autocratisation” with rising powers of far-right populist parties (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019). On a global level, there are fewer liberal democracies than autocracies for the first time in over 20 years, and nearly three out of four people in the world now live in autocracies, which is the highest since 1978 (V-Dem Institute, 2025).

Widespread climate denialism is a common theme in far-right politics (Sharman & Howarth, 2017; Hultman et al., 2019; Agius et al., 2021; Hornsey, 2021). Some deny the existence of climate change or that it is anthropogenically induced, others deny its consequences (Hobson & Niemeyer, 2012). Consequently, far-right politicians are downplaying climate policy, both nationally and internationally, calling it a threat to economic growth and people’s freedom and way of life (Marquardt et al., 2022; White, 2023; Vowles et al., 2024). They want to make climate policy less ambitious and eventually scrap it. In the US, we find that the second Trump administration has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is cutting spendings on renewable energy while increasing finance to fossil fuels. In Europe, EU climate legislation adopted in 2023 has met severe drawbacks after the EU elections in 2024.

In both the US and Europe, the latter both at EU-level and national level, far-right populists have intentionally included climate policy in their civilisationist ‘culture war’ to end what they call the ‘left-liberal hegemony’ (Buzogány & Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2022; Cunningham et al., 2024; Förell & Fischer, 2025; Weise & Camut, 2025; von Malmborg, 2026). 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 far-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 delegitimise and dehumanise those people and groups who the far-right populists do not consider fit into society through systematic soft and hard repression. As reported and analysed elsewhere, pro-climate politicians, climate justice activists, climate journalists and climate scientists are increasingly targeted by far-right leaders and supporters with politically motivated hatred, threats and various forms of violence (Berglund et al., 2024; Brax, 2024; Forst, 2024; von Malmborg, 2024a, 2026; Bjerström, 2025; Mendy & Karlsson, 2025).

The current developments in autocratic and autocratising polities indicate that climate change crime is associated with hate speech and hate crime and eventually democracy crime (von Malmborg, 2026). This raises questions about the links between different sorts of crime in climate politics and thus the scope of theory in green criminology. This paper analyses these links. I argue that climate politics may include several types of crime perpetrated by the state in different waves, where the state responds to protests on climate change crime with hate crime. In all, I suggest an expansion of green criminology. Beyond analysing harmful consequences of climate policy on ecosystems, animals, vulnerable groups of people, green criminology should also analyse harms on people, society and democracy caused by the strategies, tactics and styles of governance used by politicians and other policymakers in climate policy processes.

The paper is outlined as follows. Section 2 outlines green criminology and vicitimology with focus on climate change, while section 3 reviews the literature on politically motivated hate speech and hate crime, so-called nasty politics and rhetoric. Section 4 presents recent changes in Swedish climate politics, including climate change crime as well as nasty rhetoric, providing an empirical sounding board for the theorising on the systemic links between the different kinds of crime present in climate politics, and the challenges this pose for criminology and victimology presented in section 5.

2. Climate Change and Green Criminology

Climate change is considered the most pressing environmental topic globally, and scientists as well as politicians claim that we are in a state of climate emergency. We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster with potential collapse of humankind and societies (e.g. Peñuelas & Nogué, 2023; Ripple et al., 2024). Green criminology differs from traditional criminology in many senses, e.g. green criminology’s attention to exploring and explaining the ways in which humans and their institutions and organisations harm the ecosystems, non-human species and humanity (Lynch, 1990/2006; South & Bernie, 2006; Beirne & South, 2007; Brisman & South, 2013; South, 2014; Nobles, 2019). Harms on ecosystems involve both direct or primary harms to ecosystems as victimisation of the natural world and secondary effects on species that live within an ecosystem. Thus, green criminology draws attention to a wider set of victims than traditional forms of criminology have typically addressed, and thus the ways in which human behaviours that harm ecosystems make these different beings the victims of human development.

2.1. Climate Change Harms

The United Nations (UN) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 in 1988 with the purpose of regularly assessing science related to climate change. Since then, IPCC has presented six assessment reports synthesizing the state of knowledge on the causes, processes and consequences of climate change as well as how societies can mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Knowledge of the impacts and harms of climate change is convergent (IPCC, 2023). Climate change leads to rising sea levels and more extreme weather events affecting all regions around the world, but in different ways. In some regions heavy rainfall and flooding are becoming more common, while others are experiencing more extreme heat waves and droughts. Climate change happens much faster than previously predicted (IPCC, 2023) and animal and plant species are struggling to cope. Biodiversity is responding to climate change, with direct impacts such as changes in the behaviour and lifecycles of animal and plant species, species abundance and distribution, community composition, habitat structure and ecosystem processes. Climate change is also leading to indirect impacts and harm on biodiversity through habitat fragmentation and loss, over-exploitation of land and water areas, pollution of air, water and soil, and the spread of invasive species. Indirect impacts may be more damaging than the direct impacts due to their scale, scope and speed, and they will further reduce the resilience of ecosystems to climate change and their capacity to deliver essential eco-system services such as climate regulation, food, clean air and water, and the control of floods or erosion.

As for harm to people and societies, climate change gives rise to human health effects. Climate change may not create many new health threats. Rather, existing effects will be exacerbated and more pronounced, like (i) increases in heat-related mortality and morbidity, (ii) increases in the risk of accidents and impacts on human well-being from extreme floods, fires and storms, (iii) changes in impact of diseases from vector-, rodent-, water- or food-borne disease, and (iv) changes in seasonal distribution of allergenic pollen species, range of virus, pest and disease distribution. The World Health Organisation considers climate change to be a global ‘threat multiplier’ (WHO, 2023). It increases vulnerability to food insecurity and human illness/disease, undermines development and stability, increases the risk of domestic and international conflict, and contributes to statelessness due to loss of land, rights, and security.

People living in low-income areas with poor infrastructure, and population groups with lower incomes and assets, are more exposed to climate impacts but have less capacity to face them (IPCC, 2023). For instance, women may be disproportionately impacted by climate change and are at a disadvantage when expensive adaptation measures are required. At the same time, women are key actors in adaptation and more generally sustainable practices. Unemployed and socially marginalised people are among the most vulnerable to climate risks. Older people, disproportionately affected by reduced mobility or health impediments, will result in a higher share of the population being vulnerable to climate change impacts.

People will also be affected by climate change due to impacts on the productivity and viability of all economic sectors, with further implications on food and freshwater production, transportation, energy, infrastructure, buildings, forestry, tourism, insurance and banking, and labour markets.

In addition, climate change has also already started to have an impact on displacement and migration. Although climate is only one of several drivers of displacement and migration, many countries on their path towards sustainable development are among the most affected. People living there often depend heavily on their natural environment, and they have the least resources to cope with the changing climate.

2.2. Climate Change Victimology

From a victimology perspective, climate change raises several challenges, e.g. identifying potential victims (Cao & Wyatt, 2016; White, 2018). The concept of victimisation is much broader for green criminologists than it is for other criminologists (Lyndch, 1990/2006). The impacts on ecosystems, non-human species, humans, humanity and societies, all of which are considered living beings that can be harmed and victimised, are vast and global. In addition, many victims are ‘invisble’ or unable to speak of their suffering (Spapens 2014). This is obvious for non-human species and ecosystems, but also for vulnerable groups of humans, e.g. poor countries, lower classes, indigenous people, women and children (White, 2018). Their vulnerability increases since these groups are often discriminated in policy processes, where they are unheard in public consultations on new climate legislation, and their perspectives on victimhood are neglected (von Malmborg, 2024a, 2024b). In this sense, victims of climate change can be seen as ‘imagined victims’, in whose name the more abstract justifications (such as deterrence or upholding the rule of law) are justified (Walklate, 2017; Schwöbel-Patel, 2018).

Advocacy for combating climate change has led to a merger of environmental justice and social justice into what is labelled climate justice (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014; Sloan & Schmitz, 2025). Environmental movements, traditionally ‘speaking’ for the environment in policy and social-legal processes, have been complemented with new climate justice movements, e.g. Fridays for Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), sometimes engaging also in human rights issues (Cassegård & Thörn, 2017). As explored by Vegh Weis and White (2020), climate justice activists have concluded they must do something to stop climate change, and they see themselves as spokespersons speaking on behalf of potential victims of an escalating climate change emergency. They speak for themselves but primarily for those who do not have a voice, particularly children, advocating urgent action to mitigate and adapt to climate change (cf. Martiskainen et al., 2020; Kirsop-Taylor et al., 2023). In that sense, they evolve from victims-to-be to activists in the here-and-now, showing that some victims can take an active role.

Climate justice activists and movements tend to consider climate change as ecocide, and are labelled radical in the sense that they engage in strenuous or risky confrontative activities to advocate exogenous change of the state and industry, from writing and speaking, via legal demonstrations to disruptive civil disobedience and illegal but non-violent action (cf. Berglund & Schmidt, 2020; Berglund, 2025).

2.3. Criminalisation of Climate Change

The social, ethical and economic reasons for combating climate change have been guiding principles for climate policy for decades. But the legal responsibility and obligations of nation states to reduce climate change was outlined only recently in an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In response to a request by the General Assembly of the UN (Resolution 77/276), ICJ (2025, p. 2), concludes that:

Customary international law sets forth obligations for States to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. These obligations include the following:

a) 

States have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence and to use all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities;

b) 

States have a duty to co-operate with each other in good faith to prevent significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment, which requires sustained and continuous forms of co-operation by States when taking measures to prevent such harm.

And, importantly, ICJ claims that there are legal consequences for nation states that, by their acts or omissions, cause significant harm to the climate system, the environment, states and/or peoples and individuals, including future generations. Applying the well-established rules on nation state responsibility under customary international law, ICJ (2025, p. 3) concludes that:

A breach by a State of any obligations [in relation to climate change mitigation] constitutes an internationally wrongful act entailing the responsibility of that State. The responsible State is under a continuing duty to perform the obligation breached. The legal consequences resulting from the commission of an internationally wrongful act may include the obligations of:

a) 

cessation of the wrongful actions or omissions, if they are continuing;

b) 

providing assurances and guarantees of non-repetition of wrongful actions or omissions, if circumstances so require; and

c) 

full reparation to injured States in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction, provided that the general conditions of the law of State responsibility are met, including that a sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus can be shown between the wrongful act and injury.

Contributing to climate change is criminalised in a legal sense. According to ICJ, failure of a nation state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG emissions, i.e. the crime, does not only include emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) per se, but also upholding policies that facilitate GHG emissions, e.g. finance of fossil fuel production, subsidies for fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licenses or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies. The advise of ICJ has later been approved by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)2 and the Supreme Court of Sweden3.

3. Nasty Politics and Nasty Rhetoric

Rhetoric in politics has long since included toxic language targeting oppositional politicians. Toxic language, hate speech, has also been used in strategic agency of ethno-nationalistic parties in policy domains such as migration and identity policy related to ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation (see e.g. Matsuda, 1993; Lillian, 2007; Yılmaz, 2012; Richardson-Self, 2018; Lutz, 2019; Mason-Bish & Duggan, 2019; Hagerlid, 2021; Olivas Osuna, 2021; 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 LGBTQIA communities in EU countries are victimised by online hate speech on an almost daily basis (Berecz & Devinat, 2017).

With the rise of the radical right in the third wave of autocratisation, hate speech and hate crime is expanded beyond oppositional politicians and identity policy. It is increasingly used as a tactic in political strategic agency to silence all sorts of ‘enemies’ to far-right populist politics. To analyse such strategic and systematic use of hate speech and hate crime for political purposes, scholars of political science refer to the analytical concepts of nasty politics and nasty rhetoric (Zeitzoff, 2023).

3.1. Systematic Acts of Hate Speech and Hate Crime to Silence Political Opponents

3.1.1. Eliminating the ‘Enemy’ with Structural Violence

Nasty rhetoric describes the phenomenon when politicians use a set of tactics to insult, accuse, denigrate, threaten and in rare cases physically harm their political opponents. It is characterised by divisive and contentious rhetoric with coarse and rude language, insults and threats containing elements of hatred and aggression that entrenches political divides with ‘Us vs. Them’ narratives, i.e. pernicious polarisation (Klein, 2020). The aim is to negatively stereotype, stigmatise, delegitimise, dehumanise, silence and eliminate their opponents, physically, socially or symbolically (Moffitt & Tormey, 2013; Moffitt, 2016; Kalmoe et al., 2018; Lührmann et al., 2020; Jämte & Ellefsen, 2020; Mudde, 2021; Zeitzoff, 2023). Such opponents can include political parties, partisans, ethnic groups, immigrants, judges, businessmen, companies, journalists, NGOs, government officials or other domestic political opponents broadly construed (Zeitzoff, 2023). Nasty politics is a broader concept, including other political means to silence opponents such as politicised governance of the public sector, reduced financial support for public administration, public education and civil society organisations, manipulation of information, and reduced transparency in decision-making.

Nasty rhetoric is used in “campaign rallies, speeches, via social media or face-to-face in debates or in actual violent confrontations” (Zeitzoff, 2023, p. 6). In that sense, nasty rhetoric is related to offline and online hate speech as well as hate crime (cf. Whillock & Slayden, 1995; Chetty & Alathur, 2018; Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021; Vergani et al., 2024). Hate crime can be defined as “a crime motivated by prejudice and discrimination that stirs up a group of like-minded people to target victims because of their membership of a social group, religion or race” (Peters, 2022, p. 2326). In comparison, there is a spectrum of definitions of hate speech, reflecting the jurisprudence in different polities (Assimakoupoulos et al., 2017; Hietanen & Eddebo, 2022).

Denouncing the idea that the term hate speech is univocal or has a single meaning, Brown (2017) claims that the term hate speech is doubly figurative or metaphorical, i.e. it is systematically ambiguous between its attributional and relational metaphors. Hate speech describes (i) speech or other expressive conduct, (ii) concerning groups or classes of persons, (iii) connected with negative emotions, feelings or attitudes towards that group or persons (Brown, 2017). In a similar vein, Sponholz (2018, p. 51, my translation and italicisation) describes hate speech as “the deliberate and often intentional degradation of people through messages that call for, justify and/or trivialise violence based on a category”, e.g. ethnic group, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political preference (Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021). Due to the perpetrators’ (perceived) prejudicial motives, hate speech is a form of ‘group-related misanthropy’ (Zick et al., 2008).

Based on the work of Mouffe (2013), Chang (2019) and Olson (2020) show that hate speech, and implicitly nasty rhetoric (where hate speech is used systematically to silence the targets), is not only about what is conveyed explicitly by use of language. Political sentiments are often emotional and affective, determined by viscerally experienced sentiments and a physically imagined sense of rightness or wrongness. As such, hate speech, be it stand-alone or systematically used in nasty politics, is not restricted to speech acts or the written language, but also encompasses, e.g., image-based communication with photos, pictures and videos (Bleiker, 2018). Some politicians, such as Donald Trump, also use gesture to ridicule and caricature his political opponents (Goldstein et al., 2020). Political persuaders, particularly populists, use language or images and sometimes the absence of language, e.g. rejection to take interviews with certain journalists, and exclusion or ejection of certain groups from public meetings, to affect emotions, perceptions of knowledge, belief, value, and action (see e.g. Mendoza-Denton, 2020; Strömbäck et al., 2022; Shah, 2024). Thus, a statement, image or action that is not overtly hateful, aggressive or violent can also be an expression of nasty rhetoric. The ‘silent’ act of excluding some people or groups from a political meeting is hardly seen as hate speech but can be seen as strong insult or accusation in nasty politics, emotionally affecting the target (von Malmborg, 2026). In all, the notion of ‘nasty’ in nasty rhetoric is thus about the inherent message sent in the communicative act – a message of division, supremacy, retribution, dehumanisation and excommunication.

Zeitzoff (2023) has proposed a typology of nasty rhetoric (Table 1), to which I have added economic and legal violence (sanctions), e.g. state repression, increasingly used against climate justice activists in Europe (Berglund et al., 2024; Forst, 2024). The table also presents the respective levels of aggression. In contrast to hate speech, nasty rhetoric includes not only language, but different kinds of violence. Thus, it covers ‘rhetorical’ actions other than hate speech, just like hate crime can include both language and physical or other forms of violent actions. To further clarify the concept of nasty rhetoric in relation to other concepts used in studies of hate speech and different forms of state repression, i.e. soft and hard repression (Earl, 2006, 2011), the latter are included in Table 1. Soft repression includes non-violent means such as silencing activists or marginalising oppositional ideas, e.g. through ridicule, stigma, or silencing (Ferree, 2004), i.e. hate speech. Hard repression involves legal and/or economic force and coercion to control or crush oppositional action (Earl, 2006).

According to Zeitzoff (2023), nasty rhetoric covers hate speech as well as hate crime (Whillock & Slayden, 1995; Chetty & Alathur, 2018; Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021; Vergani et al., 2024), but also other kinds of hateful, hate-filled or hate-fuelled actions. Nasty rhetoric works holistically, where different types and expressions of nasty rhetoric do not happen in isolation, but tend to happen together but not necessarily sequentially, with more threatening and aggressive rhetoric happening alongside less aggressive rhetoric (Zeitzoff, 2023). Some expressions of nasty rhetoric may be explicit (e.g. accusing a journalist of being biased), while others may be more subtle and concealed (e.g. refusal of a politician to give interviews to certain journalists). In other words, more overt forms of hateful, hate-filled, hate-fuelled or hate-inciting acts can go hand in hand with implicit, veiled and subtle expressive conducts which at a first glance may seem to be rational or normal, and link up to more overt acts, but also somewhat hide and disguise (cf. McIntosh, 2020). Similarly, discursive studies of hate speech recognise that “explicitness cannot be the only determining criterion in the identification of hate speech” (Assimakopoulos, 2020, p. 179). As there are different types of nasty rhetoric acts, suggestions have been made to differentiate ‘hard’ hate speech from ‘soft’ hate speech (Serafis & Assimakopopulos, 2024).

Like hate speech, nasty rhetoric targets people both directly and indirectly. While some are targeted directly, receiving insults, accusations and threats in person, other people and groups in society are targeted indirectly by the messages sent to some people. This message effect may scare people and prevent them from expressing opinions and identities that do not fit with those of the offenders (cf. Ilse & Hagerlid, 2025). By refraining from doing or being someone malicious, people can avoid being subject to nasty rhetoric in person.

Since nasty politics and nasty rhetoric are umbrella concepts used in political science, scholarly understanding of the phenomena would inevitably draw on studies of hate speech and hate crime in disciplines such as sociology, psychology, criminology and communication studies, e.g. to identify and explain motives, consequences and causalities. Compared to analysis of hate speech and hate crime in these disciplines, the analysis of nasty rhetoric in nasty politics adds a political and governance perspective to the understanding of the phenomenon. Studies of nasty politics and nasty rhetoric analyse hate speech and hate crime as an integrated tactic in political processes such as agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy implementation. Analysing nasty rhetoric puts hate speech in relation to other tactics and tools of politics and governance, e.g. fiscal policies, legislative change, governance of state authorities and state-owned companies, and discrimination in public policy processes to favour the ingroup and disadvantage the outgroup political advocacy. Hate speech is but one tool in the toolbox used by politicians to silence political opponents.

3.1.2. Nasty Politics and the Radical Right

Nasty politics fits well with the governance style of radical right populists waging a culture war in the ‘left-liberal hegemony’ (cf. Olivas Osuna, 2021). The populist worldview moralises a dualistic political confrontation (Hunter, 1991; Abts & Rummens, 2007), and includes a rhetoric with narratives and discourse, framing the opponents, the ‘enemies’, as intrinsically immoral, innately malicious and evil individuals and groups who are routinely blamed and scapegoated for perceived grievances and social ills, which are generally fictional (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022; Ketola & Odmalm, 2023; Abraham, 2024). In contrast, far-right populist leaders portray themselves as the saviours of the nation and the pure and good ‘people’, while the ‘enemy’ should be punished for their disastrous crimes against the ‘people’ (Mudde, 2017).

To mobilise followers, far-right populists use narratives of ‘disaster’ or ‘anxiety’ that refer to a fantasy of a constant crisis threatening the worldviews, values and idenity of ‘people’, rather than an actual one of the nation (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022; Ketola & Odmalm, 2023; Abraham, 2024). Such symbolic threats predict hatred which in turn predicts aggressive tendencies and hurting behaviour ((Stephan & Stephan, 2017; Martínez et al., 2022a). Hate is a destructive force, aiming to eliminate an interpersonal or outgroup target (Pretus et al., 2022). In comparison, threats to safety, goals or resources, i.e. realistic threats (Stephan & Stephan, 2017), also give rise to strong negative emotions, but rather anger and dislike than hate and disgust (cf. Martínez et al., 2022a, 2022b). Anger and dislike predict tendencies of wanting to change or restore the (unjust) situation (Halperin et al., 2011, 2012; Fischer et al., 2018; van Doorn et al., 2014; van Doorn, 2018; Pretus et al., 2022). If we consider a person or a group to be malicious, we hate them, but if we consider them to act maliciously, we get angry. We can forgive someone acting maliciously if they change behaviour (Halperin et al., 2011, 2012; Fischer et al., 2018; van Doorn, 2018; Martínez et al., 2022b). Compared to hate, anger is a constructive force, aiming at restoring or changing the situation and the target, either through coercion aimed at the anger-eliciting perpetrator, or more prosocial behaviours focused on the victim.

The use of symbolic threats such as, all immigrants are criminal, muslims are rapists, all women hate men, climate scientists will restrict your right to drive a car, channels emotions of hate towards the outgroup, with a motivational goal of eliminating the ‘enemies’ on the basis of their dispositional evil attributions (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008; Fischer et al., 2018; van Doorn, 2018). They should be silenced and expelled from society (Aalberg & de Vreese, 2016 Hunger & Paxton, 2022).,

Populism is based on emotional appeals to the ‘people’ as the ingroup, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of outgroups. Emotional rhetoric is central in reproduction of structural power and power relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and key in a Foucauldian sense of emotional governance (Foucault, 1977; Durnová, 2018). Emotional governance includes techniques of surveillance, control, and manipulation for leaders to govern emotions through cultural and institutional processes, paying attention to collective emotions as patterns of relationships and belonging (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022). It “affords individuals with a sense of what is regarded as appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and the circumstances in which certain emotions (e.g. fear, hatred, and contempt) become acceptable” (Crawford, 2014, p. 536).

3.2. Nasty Rhetoric in Climate Politics

Recent studies have found that hate speech is now used systematically to polarise society and groups of people also based on political preferences in climate politics (Vowles & Hultman, 2021a; Berglund et al., 2024; Forst, 2024; Vowles et al., 2024; von Malmborg, 2024a, 2026). Advocates of strong climate policy, and journalists reporting about it, are described by right-wing populists as an ‘enemy’ to the nation, destroying life of the good and pure ‘people’ (von Malmborg, 2026).

Research on hate speech in climate politics has focused mainly on hate campaigns towards specific targets, e.g., climate activists and climate journalists, and its presence in social media. The climate justice movement has been particularly targeted by hate speech in social media, often in combination with misogyny (Agius et al., 2021; Andersson, 2021; White, 2021; Arce-García et al., 2023). Power dynamics often circle climate policy and female politicians simultaneously (e.g. Miller & Bloomfield, 2022). Combining climate denial, misogyny and sexism, Donald J. Trump, Jose Bolsonaro and many other male politicians directed and instigated hate and treats towards Greta Thunberg, the figurehead of the climate justice movements (Andersson, 2021; Park et al., 2021; Vowles & Hultman, 2021a; White, 2021; Arce-García et al., 2023; Mede & Schroeder, 2024; Wahlström & Uba, 2024). Hate speech of climate deniers is also targeting climate journalists, aiming to discredit individual journalists and newspapers, but also to undermine the deliberative function of online user fora (Björkenfeldt & Gustafsson, 2023; Schulz-Tomančok & Woschnagg, 2024; Bjerström, 2025). Social media has reshaped the media landscape in fundamental ways that brings about novel avenues in the discursive climate to provide support for positions and actions of a certain group or movement (Vowles & Hultman, 2021b; Wahlström et al., 2021).

As for hate speech related to policymaking, insults and accusations have been used by different policy advocates to frame contesting, polarised views on climate policy in the political rhetoric of advocates and deniers of climate change more broadly (e.g. Knight & Greenberg, 2011; Eubanks, 2015; Sharman & Howarth, 2017; Bsumek et al. 2019; Nordensvärd & Ketola, 2022; Pandey, 2024). So far, few have analysed the systematic use of hate speech and other means of nasty rhetoric in the framing and formulation of climate politics in specific polities. Analysing agency in the radical transformation of Swedish climate policy since 2022, von Malmborg (2024a) identified systematic acts of hate speech by leading right-wing politicians, targeting advocates of strong climate policy. Later, von Malmborg (2026) showed and explained how and why hate speech is used systematically by leading politicians and their far-right populist supporters, as a tactic to delegitimise and dehumanise oppositional politicians as well as climate scientists, climate activists, climate journalists and public officers engaged in climate change. The purpose was to make them silent, to eliminate them from the public debate on climate policy. They also use hate speech as a tactic to mobilise followers to expand hate speech on pro-climate advocates. Metaphorically, he considers nasty rhetoric to be a double-edged sword.

3.3. Victimology and Nasty Rhetoric

Research on nasty politics and rhetoric has little focus on perpetrators as criminals and target people and groups as victims. Addressing consequences, it mainly focuses on negative impacts on democracy, particularly governance and power in liberal democracy.

But prior to affecting politics and democratic governance, nasty politics and rhetoric does something to people, emotionally, cognitively, normatively and behaviourally (Cassese, 2021; Wahlström et al., 2021; Abuín-Vences et al., 2023; Renström et al., 2023). The aim is to silence real people in the outgroup. Hence, to understand the impacts of nasty rhetoric on politics and democracy, it is important to analyse impacts on the human victims in the outgroup, the emotions it provokes, how individuals perceive this type of messages, and how their behaviours are affected. Since the theory of nasty rhetoric lack these perspectives, valuable insights can be learned from multidisciplinary research on harms and victimisation of hate speech and hate crime (see e.g. Boeckmann & Turpin-Petrosino, 2002; Leets, 2002; Chakraborti, 2017; Walklate, 2017; Chetty & Alathur, 2018; Roseman et al., 2018; Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021; Farrell & Lockwood, 2023; Vergani et al., 2024).

3.3.1. Victims and Victimisation

Targets of nasty rhetoric can be considered victims from a criminological and more particularly a victimological perspective. Nasty rhetoric not only violates the victims’ personal freedom and fundamental right to dignity and equality, but also the free formation of opinions and, by extension, our democracy (Matsuda, 1989; Ilse & Hagerlid, 2025).

The notion of an ideal victim (Christie, 1986) has been influential for analysing the victim–offender relationship. Research on domestic violence and international criminal law has criticised the ideal victim concept and made victimology recognise that the decision regarding what is and is not a ‘crime’ and how ‘victims’ and ‘victimhood’ are conceptualised often reflects political power and interests (Duggan, 2018; Schwöbel-Patel, 2018). Bosma et al. (2018) expands on Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ by addressing not only the characteristics of the victim and the victim–offender relationship, but also on victim’s sense of threat and subsequent coping, and society’s interests and values at the time of victimisation.

The views on and definitions of victims in society are culturally dependent (Mythen & McGowand, 2017). Victims are emerging to play a more important role in the politics and practice of criminal justice, as an intellectual topic in their own right and, as a significant source of change within criminology (Rock, 2017). Influenced by insights from feminist victimology, policymaking is often driven by victims and victim groups (Rock, 2017; Walklate, 2017), heralding the ‘revolt of the client’ (Haug & Sussman, 1969). The impact of crime, the victimisation, is now considered a balance between the severity of injury and the level of resilience, where the latter is a resource to help cope with harm, as well as a “form of agency that reminds that the victims of crime should not be assumed or treated as passive, subordinate or powerless” (Green & Pemberton, 2017, p. 61). Cultural victimisation is of particular importance in studies of nasty rhetoric in climate politics since far-right populists are waging a culture war on the ‘left-liberal conspiracy’ and ambitious climate policy. Climate scientists, journalists and activists are victimised on cultural grounds.

Sometimes perpetrators deflect blame and responsibility (Gruber, 2023). Feminist criminology has found that such victim blaming is common in domestic violence targeting women (e.g. Harsey & Freyd, 2020; Harsey et al., 2024). The concept of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender roles) has been developed to describe how perpetrators of interpersonal violence question the victim when confronted for their abusive behaviour (Freyd, 1997). When used, a perpetrator denies or minimises the harms of any wrongdoing, attacks the victim’s credibility, and reverses victim and offender roles such that the perpetrator assumes a victimised position and declares the victim to be the true perpetrator.

3.3.2. Harms of Nasty Rhetoric

Nasty rhetoric is used to silence and eliminate people in the outgroup and harms victims sequentially in different ways. Nasty rhetoric is not empty words: it is emotional. Political sentiments in nasty rhetoric appeal to emotions, aiming at persuading ingroup people to join the weird kind of sport of hating and threatening ‘enemies of the nation’, and at dehumanising and hurting outgroup people emotionally, psychologically and eventually physically, economically or through legal avenues (von Malmborg, 2026). Nasty rhetoric does something to people being targeted. Consequently, democracy is also harmed.

Emotional Harms

Nasty rhetoric evokes different feelings, and harms the outgroup targets emotionally (Chang, 2019; Olson, 2020). Previous studies have reported that victims of nasty rhetoric react with fear, unrest, discomfort, resentment, feelings of vulnerability, frustration, angst and sometimes anger (Lazarus, 1991; Calvert, 1997; Lang et al., 2000; Stephan et al., 2009; Wagner & Morisi, 2019; Olson, 2020; Hagerlid, 2021; Allwood et al., 2022; Cowan & Hodge, 2022; Renström et al., 2023; Glad et al., 2024). Anger is often seen as a prototypical protest emotion, posited as a necessary catalysing force that moves a person into action after being targeted by perceived wrongdoings (Cantrell, 2019). Fear and angst, in turn, evoke psychic trauma and feelings of distrust, suspicion and insecurity (Hagerlid, 2021; Allwood et al., 2022; Glad et al., 2024). Recent research provides evidence that exposure to hate speech can predict posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms (Wachs et al., 2022; Wypych & Bilewicz, 2024). Dreißigacker et al. (2024) reports that victims of online hate speech exhibit a more pronounced feeling of insecurity outside the Internet, while victims of other forms of cybercrime do not differ in this regard from non-victims. Victims of offline hate speech did not show the same sense of insecurity, indicating that insecurity rise from the uncontrollable spread of hatred on the Internet reaching its victims even in protected private spheres.

Cognitive harms

Emotions influence cognitive processing, which varies depending on which emotions are elicited by a certain stimulus (Izard, 2010). The increased presence of hate speech in one’s environment creates a sense of a descriptive norm that allows outgroup derogation, which can lead to political radicalisation, polarisation and the erosion of existing anti-discriminatory norms (Bilewicz & Soral, 2020). Moreover, it seems that preexisting attitudes towards an outgroup is strengthened by hate speech, indicating that hate speech can increase polarisation in society (Schäfer et al., 2022). 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. Bilewicz and Soral argue that through basic psychological dynamics, societies become more accepting of derogatory language and less accepting of religious, ethnic, sexual and political minorities groups.

In addition, frequent and repetitive exposure to hate speech delivered by people having ideas aligned with your own reduces people’s ability to recognise the offensive character of such language (Bilewicz & Soral, 2020). Through a process of desensitisation, where individuals gradually learn to ignore these messages, empathy is replaced by intergroup contempt as a dominant response to others (Soral et al., 2018). After desensitisation, people in the ingroup are less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced towards the outgroup than their counterparts in the control condition (Soral et al., 2018). This aligns with analyses of hate speech in communication studies, illustrating a reinforcement of racist attitudes and disparate treatment of minorities that occurs with the repetitive use of hate speech (Calvert, 1997). Desensitisation plays an important role in the process of habitualisation, collectivisation and normalisation of hate speech (cf. Soral et al., 2018; Szanto, 2018; Bilewicz & Soral, 2020)

Both emotional and cognitive responses to hate speech seem to differ depending on ideological adherence of the audience. Studies indicate that emotional and cognitive effects provoked by hateful messages will not depend so much on the content of the message as on the ideological affiliation of the receiver with that of the sender (Crawford & Brandt, 2020). Abuín-Vences et al. (2022) found that more negative emotions are detected in progressive audiences when the hate speech is contrary to their ideology, while conservatives show less negative emotion in all cases. This is a consequence of normative pressure and outgroup cognitive biases. Similarly, people with different ideological orientation show partially different emotional opportunity structures and distinct political strategies at exploiting these structures (Salmela & von Scheve, 2018). Right-wing populism is characterised by repressed shame that transforms fear and insecurity into resentment and hatred against perceived ‘enemies’ of the precarious self. Left-wing populism, in turn, associates more with acknowledged shame that allows individuals to self-identify as aggrieved and humiliated by civil libertarian and neoliberal policies and their advocates. The latter type of shame holds emancipatory potential as it allows individuals to establish bonds with others who feel the same, whereas repressors remain in their shame or seek bonds from repression-mediated defensive hatred. This makes great sense in nasty politics with pernicious polarisation, where hate speech is used to mobilise ingroup followers and dehumanise outgroup members.

Behavioural harms

Emotions are important to personal and political behaviour because they are modes of relating to the environment: states of readiness for engaging, or not engaging, in interaction with that environment (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Keltner et al., 2014). Emotions are likely to influence action tendencies because they inform an individual about a situation and prepare the body for a certain course of action (Frijda, 1986). Hence, emotions can influence physiological behaviour, such as basic fighting or fleeing (Izard, 2010). More recent studies have explained how emotions play an important mediating role in the associations between threat and behaviour (Martínez et al., 2022a, 2023).

The intentional effect of nasty rhetoric is to silence the targets, making people self-censor and withdraw socially and politically (Zeitzoff, 2023). But nasty rhetoric can backfire. Particularly hard state repression can make the subjects of repression more radical, or it can trigger movement mobilisation (cf. della Porta, 2013; Lindekilde, 2014; Jämte & Ellefsen, 2020). The labelling of a radical movement as extremist or violent creates confirmation and an aura of radicalness that facilitates contacts between radicals and increased distrust of institutional politics (cf. Peterson & Wahlström 2015).

Democracy harms

Zeitzoff (2023) argues that nasty politics and nasty rhetoric may have some positive effects to democracy since it provides a tactic for marginalised groups and politicians to exercise power. However, he claims that the negative impacts are more detrimental. Without specifying relations and causalities, he particularly mentions that (p. 53):

• it makes people more cynical of democracy and less willing to vote and participate;
• politicians in power can use nasty politics as a tool to demonise their political rivals and stay in power, eroding the democracy in the process;
• an increase in nasty politics leads good politicians to choose not to run and to retire, and nastier politicians take their place; and
• heightened nasty politics precedes actual political violence.

As for violence in nasty politics and rhetoric, Piazza (2020) analysed terrorism and hate speech data for about 150 countries globally in the period 2000–2017. He found that hate speech by political figures boosts domestic terrorism, defined as “the deliberate, premeditated use of violence, or the threat of violence, by non-state actors that is politically motivated and is intended to influence a wider audience beyond individuals affected directly by the attack” (Piazza, 2020, note 1). Such domestic terrorism is mediated through increased political polarisation caused by political hate speech (cf. Klein, 2020). Donald J. Trump is a well-known user of nasty rhetoric targeting several groups in society, promoting hatred and violence (McIntosh, 2020; Valcore et al., 2023), for which he has been called “insulter in chief” (Vargiu et al., 2024). He is not the only world leader accused of publicly denigrating people beyond politicians for their racial, ethnic or religious identities, or for their political opinions (Piazza, 2020), but he actively incited violent riots at the storming of Capitolium on 6 January 2021 (Zeitzoff, 2023), and he violates numerous democratic norms such as legitimacy and accountability in delivery and content of his speeches (e.g., Jamieson & Taussig, 2017; Ross & Rivers, 2020).

Going beyond nasty rhetoric between politicians, research on hate speech and hate crime targeting journalists and scientists indicate that nasty rhetoric restricts the flow of information to politicians as well as citizens, which may invoke knowledge resistance (Strömbäck et al., 2022). This poses grave challenges for the functioning of liberal and deliberative democracies, e.g. (i) free formation of opinion, (ii) public deliberation, (iii) citizens ability to evaluate public policy, hold politicians accountable and make informed votes (Tenove, 2020; Wikforss, 2021; Pawelec, 2022), (iv) undermining democratic processes by corrupting political discussions (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; Dahl, 1998), and (v) undermining the legitimacy of the democratic system as such (Lago & Coma, 2017; Pawelec, 2022).

In all, political hate speech breeds general mistrust in politics (Mutz & Reeves, 2005) and feeds political intolerance, defined as the support or willingness to denounce basic democratic values and the equal rights of people belonging to a defined outgroup in a particular society (Oates & Gibson, 2006). This is considered one of the most problematic phenomena in democratic societies as it paves the way for democratic breakdown (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). In addition, strong civil society organisations and civic education are key to defend liberal democracy against ongoing autocratisation (Lührmann, 2021; Mudde, 2021; Silander, 2024; V-Dem Institute, 2024). Attacking civil society organisations including social movements through nasty rhetoric or other means of nasty politics, reducing financial support to civic education and civil society organizations, will reduce the civic space (cf. Buyse, 2018; Ardin, 2026).

3.4. Criminalisation of Nasty Rhetoric

While hate speech and hate crime have been analysed from criminological perspectives, nasty politics and nasty rhetoric have not. While hate crime is illegal, according to different legal standards in different jurisdictions, some but not all types of hate speech are considered illegal acts in many polities (see e.g. Tsesis, 2009; Brudholm & Johansen, 2018; European Commission, 2021; Sheppard et al., 2021). To the extent that hate speech is considered illegal in one jurisdiction, it is also a hate crime there.

3.4.1. International Debates

The question of banning hate speech and implicitly nasty rhetoric has been and is still analysed and debated in law, criminology, political science and philosophy, with focus on hate speech related to religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity (see e.g. Yong, 2011; Bleich, 2011; Brudholm, 2015; Howard, 2017; Enarsson & Lindgren, 2018; Howard, 2019; Mchangama & Alkiviadou, 2021; Hietanen & Eddebo, 2022). Brudholm (2015) argues that we should hesitate or even abstain from classifying hate crime as a human rights violation. Following this line of thought, Howard (2019) argues that we must show that agents have moral duties to refrain from the conduct in question to justifying criminal prohibition of nasty rhetoric.

To balance institutional suppression of hate speech and the liberal democracy freedom of speech, Hietanen and Eddebo suggest that outright prohibitions of specified ideas are implemented for clear reasons, rather than ambiguous suppressions of a vague category of speech acts. Explicit lists with clearly specified axiological reasons for the suppressions can at least, in principle, be targeted by rational arguments. In addition, they claim that any consequential definition must be agreed on internationally (e.g., through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), since, they argue, we should not have to rely on big tech platforms to restrict their own activities.

In parallel to the scholarly debate, legislation restricting freedom of speech to curb hate speech has risen in liberal democracies since the 1960s (Bleich, 2011). Consequently, legislation has been adopted around the world that criminalises hate speech and implicitly nasty rhetoric into hate crime. In most cases, such legislation focuses on racist, religious, gender or identity-related hate speech and hate crime, but in some cases, hate speech and hate crime based on differences in ethics and political opinion, criminalising also threats to democracy (Bleich, 2011; Howard, 2017; Alkiviadou, 2018; Mchangama & Alkiviadou, 2021). However, current legislation lacks a common approach on what hate speech is and the threshold which needs to be met for legal regulation to be permissible (Alkiviadou, 2018; Brudholm & Johansen, 2018).

3.4.2. EU Legislation

In the EU, relevant acts are the European Convention of Human Rights, the European Union Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia, and the Additional Protocol to the Cybercrime Convention of the Council of Europe. Referring to the case law of the ECHR, Howard (2017) claims that nasty rhetoric, hate speech and freedom of expression related to religion should not be restricted except when offenders incite to hatred and violence and there is an imminent danger that violence will follow or where it stops people from holding or manifesting their religion. Based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of the ECHR case law, Mchangama and Alkiviadou argue that both the ECHR and the European Commission have “adopted an overly restrictive approach to hate speech, which fails to provide adequate protection to political speech on controversial issues” (2021, p. 1008). In comparison, they find that EU member states “have adopted more convincing approaches of hate speech, providing a robust protection of free speech while leaving room for the State to curtail the most extreme forms of non-violent hate speech” (Mchangama & Alkiviadou, 2018, p. 1008). Most European countries focus on specific categories of victims of hate speech, while others take a more generic approach (Bengtsson Mueller & Evans, 2024). Recently, the European Commission (2021) proposed to extend the list of EU crimes to all forms of hate crime and hate speech, whether because of race, religion, gender or sexual identity. But the list does not include hate speech and hate crime fuelled by differences in political opinion on non-identity related policy issues such as climate change.

Besides criminalising the act of hate speech, the European Commission signed in 2016 a code of conduct with large tech companies such as Meta, Twitter/X, YouTube and Microsoft including a series of commitments to combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe. In January 2025, the Commission and the European Board for Digital Services presented a revised code of conduct, which has also been integrated into the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). According to the Commission, Code of Conduct+ will strengthen the way online platforms deal with content that EU and national laws define as illegal hate speech. The integrated code of conduct will facilitate compliance with and the effective enforcement of the DSA when it comes to risks of dissemination of illegal content on their services. In 2025, the DSA was firmly criticised by US Vice President J.D. Vance for being antidemocratic, restricting freedom of speech. Since then, the Commission has fined some US tech companies for violating the legislation, and more fines may come.

In 2024, the EU adopted a directive to prevent strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). The aim is to provide safeguards against manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings in civil matters with cross-border implications brought against natural and legal persons on account of their engagement in public participation.

3.4.3. Swedish Legislation

There is no explicit ban on hate speech in Sweden, but certain communication, such as incitement to racial hatred, defamation or attacks on a public official, and cases of derogatory address, violation of privacy or disrespect, is prohibited by law. Swedish legislation concerning nasty rhetoric is part of a larger framework for democracy-threatening crime, including (i) hate crime, (ii) democracy crime, (iii) violent extremism, and (iv) influence crime. In all cases, the crimes are characterised by the offender’s motive to damage democratic values. To these categories will be added a ban on SLAPPs in 2026, when Sweden will transpose the anti-SLAPP directive into Swedish legislation.

Both hate crimes and democracy crimes are considered message crimes, because the motive behind the act is not only directed at the personal victim, cf. message effect of nasty rhetoric. These are crimes directed against persons or groups of people with the aim of intimidating or preventing them from participating in public and democratic discourse, with the message that they should refrain from expressing opinions that do not agree with those of the perpetrator or perpetrators. In this way, the free formation of opinions and, by extension, our democracy is threatened by, for example, a researcher refraining from communicating scientific findings to the media, politicians and the public, that a journalist avoids reporting, or that an elected politician avoids making decisions on a certain issue. Initially, only elected politicians, journalists and artists who were exposed to crimes in their profession were considered potential victims, but this distinction has in practice been loosened as the prevalence of threats and hatred against several professional groups has increased in recent years, such as researchers.

Hate crime is not a crime in a strictly legal sense in Sweden, but in 2019 the Riksdag adopted an amendment to the Criminal Code making it possible for national courts to consider the offender’s motive for a possible crime when ruling on punishment. More specifically, courts can consider (Criminal Code 1962:700, 29 Chap. 2§ 7p):4

whether a motive for the crime was to offend a person, an ethnic group or another such group of persons on the basis of race, colour, national or ethnic origin, creed, sexual orientation, transgender identity or expression, or any other similar circumstance.

“Any other similar circumstance” could potentially refer to insulting a person because of political opinion. If someone is convicted of another crime and the court finds such a motive, it is classified as a ‘hate crime’, whereupon the sentence can be harsher. An individual ‘hate crime’ can thus be seen as part of a structural attempt to violate the fundamental values of democracy and the principles of human rights.

4. The Case of Swedish Climate Politics

Sweden has been considered a bastion of strong liberal democracy since the end of World War II, able to develop and maintain a green and equitable welfare state (Boese et al., 2022; Silander, 2024). However, the 2022 elections to the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) marks a shift. Then, the ethno-nationalist and populist part Sweden Democrats (SD) won 20.5 % of the votes and 73 out of 349 seats, becoming the second largest party in the Riksdag after the Social Democrats (S). This progress made SD gain formal powers in the Riksdag, holding the chairs in the committees of justice, labour market, foreign affairs and industry, and having direct influence over the government in most policy areas.

Bargaining on who was to form a government for the 2022–2026 term resulted in the Tidö Agreement (Tidö parties, 2022) between SD and a liberal-conservative troika of the liberal-conservative Moderates (M), the Christian Democrats (KD) and the Liberals (L). SD agreed to support the Tidö government, under the condition that SD takes part in decisions in six policy areas to undergo a rapid paradigm shift: climate and energy, criminality, economic growth and household economy, education, migration and integration, and public health, of which criminality, migration and climate change are deemed the most important (Rothstein, 2023). SD holds no seats in the cabinet but has political staff in the Prime Minister’s Office. In that sense, SD holds tangible powers but is not accountable for the government’s decisions. In all, the Tidö quartet holds majority with 176 of 349 seats in the Riksdag, while the opposition, consisting of S, MP, C and V, holds 173 seats.

When formed in 1988, SD was extremist and violent, rooted in neo-fascism. But with the election of the current party leader in 2005, SD tried to distance itself from its neo-fascist past and show a more respectable façade to gain legitimacy (Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019; Widfeldt, 2023). Compared to other far-right movements in Sweden, SD’s ideology is culture-oriented rather than race-oriented or identity-oriented, focusing on beliefs, values and behaviours that are considered to be Swedish (Poletti Lundström, 2022). Inspired by the American Christian right with its Breitbart doctrine and the works of British nationalist political philosopher Roger Scruton (2004), SD acts to counter oikophobia, i.e. the contempt for one’s own culture, one’s history and one’s country. To SD, oikophobia characterises postmodern Western society, where the only thing that is valued is the foreign. Countering oikophobia needs a culture war (Hunter, 1991), in which religion has moved from the periphery to the centre of SD’s populist nativist ideology, where the Church of Sweden’s Protestantism is at the centre of what SD considers Swedish (Poletti Lundström, 2022). Religion is recurrently one of the adjacent concepts that temporarily stabilises the core of Swedish far-right ethno-nationalist populism: people and territory.

In this culture war, SD combines populism, anti-pluralism and authoritarianism with ethno-nationalism – the longing for a culturally and ethnically homogenous nation state – and propose, based on populist storytelling, illiberal policies in many areas, primarily migration but also culture, media, social, justice and environmental policy (Hellström, 2023). SD hails Victor Orbán’s Hungary, the worst example of autocratization in the world (Meléndez & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2021; Mudde, 2021; Boese et al., 2022; Silander, 2024; V-Dem Institute, 2024), as a role model of democratic governance. They have also welcomed the recent developments in the US and world politics since the installation of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the US in January 2025, e.g. US secretaries’ denouncing of EU security and environmental policies, US support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the US–Israel war on Iran.

Due to the success of SD, Sweden is currently one of the strongholds of far-right populists in the EU (Widfeldt, 2023). To understand SD political agency, they “sacralize their core ideas and predominantly employ virtue ethical justification strategies, positioning themselves as morally superior to other parties” (Vahter & Jakobson, 2025, p. 793). They assign essentialist value to their key political concepts, a stance that sharply contrasts with the moral composition of the rest of the political spectrum adhering to liberal or deliberative perspectives on democracy.

Accusing Swedish established media of belonging to a “left-liberal conspiracy”, SD and other nationalist right-wing groups built their own ecosystem of digital media news sites, blogs, video channels and anonymous troll accounts in social media, which did not have to relate to the rules of press ethics (Vowles & Hultman, 2021b). Thus, they have been able to bring about novel means of direct interaction among people and create discursive opportunity for their propaganda to gain visibility, reactions (resonance) and popular legitimacy for their thoughts and activities in the public sphere (cf. Koopmans & Olzak, 2004; Caiani & Kröll, 2015; Wahlström et al., 2021). In 2024, it was revealed by Swedish news media that SD’s communications office, with instructions from the party leader, runs a ‘troll factory’ in social media to deliberately and systematically spread misinformation and conspiracy theories to shape opinion, manipulate voters and incite outgroups by spreading insults, hate and threats.5 SD Party leader Åkesson has confirmed that SD, representing the ‘people’, use and will continue to use ‘troll accounts’. Normalising knowledge resistance, manipulation, and nasty rhetoric is central to their strategy of structural policy entrepreneurship to change Swedish politics and governance (von Malmborg, 2024a, 2025).

Swedish scholars of democracy (Rothstein, 2023; Silander, 2024; V-Dem Institute, 2024; von Malmborg, 2024a, 2024c) as well as Civil Rights Defenders Sweden (CRD, 2023), United Nations Association of Sweden (2023) and Gustavsson (2024) have identified several signs of autocratisation in Sweden since the 2022 elections. They argue that the current developments in Swedish politics and society risk weakening Sweden’s liberal democracy and may be another step in the process of gradual autocratisation overseen by democratically elected but antidemocratic leaders. Tidö parties use democratic institutions to erode democratic functions, e.g. censoring media, imposing restrictions on civil society, harassing activists, protesting, and promoting polarization through disrespect of counterarguments and pluralism (Silander, 2024; V-Dem Institute, 2024; von Malmborg, 2024a, 2024c).

4.1. A Criminal Paradigm Shift

Sweden used to be considered an international role model in climate policy (Matti et al., 2021), advocating high ambitions in global and EU climate governance as well as nationally. In 2017, the Swedish Riksdag adopted with support of all parties but SD a new climate policy framework, including:

• A target that Sweden should have net-zero GHG emissions by 2045;
• A Climate Act, stating among other things that the government shall present to the Riksdag a Climate Action Plan (CAP) with policies and measures to reach the targets, at the latest the calendar year after national elections; and
• Establishment of the Swedish Climate Policy Council (SCPC), an independent and interdisciplinary body of climate scientists, to evaluate the alignment of the government’s policies with the 2045 climate target.

Sweden’s GHG emissions in total decreased by approximately 37% from 1990 to 2022 and a decoupling of emissions and economic growth began in 1992, when Sweden introduced carbon dioxide taxation. This long-term trend of emissions reductions made a U-turn when the Tidö government supported by SD entered office.

They advocated a radical change of Swedish climate policy and governance. SD has long since been vocal as a climate change denier (Jylhä et al., 2020; Vihma et al., 2021), wanting to abort national climate targets and climate policies. SD is culturally and cognitively motivated by conflicting ‘evil’ beliefs of previous governments for decades, both S-led and M-led. Bargaining on finalising the Tidö CAP in 2023, SD reluctantly accepted the 2045 target but managed to reduce overall climate policy ambitions by deleting short- and medium-term targets and actions important for reaching long-term targets. The Tidö quartet focuses entirely on emission reductions by 2045, ignoring climate science saying that reducing every ton of GHG emitted from now to 2045 is what counts (Lahn, 2021). Based on a combination of anti-establishment rhetoric, knowledge resistance and emotional communication of doubt, industrial/breadwinner masculinities and ethno-nationalism, SD in close collaboration with the Tidö government, advocates less ambitious or even aborting climate targets and climate policies, including the Swedish Climate Act and the European Green Deal (Hultman et al., 2019; Vowles & Hultman, 2021a; Ekberg & Pressfeldt, 2022; Vowles et al., 2024; Malm et al., 2025). They look back to a great national past during the oil-fuelled record years of the 1950s and 60s, when men had lifelong jobs in industry and sole access to society’s positions of power.

In all, Tidö climate policy can be characterised as anti-climate action with increased GHG emissions. The CAP, presented in December 2023, provides further evidence that Tidö climate policy violates the legal responsibilities of nation states advised by ICJ. While the government estimates that existing and new policies would reduce GHG emissions to zero by 2045, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SWEPA, 2024), the government’s expert authority on climate change, estimates a gap of 35 per cent (Figure 1). The reason being that the government included effects of policies that it had aborted, as well as calculated GHG emission reductions from policies that had neither been designed, nor decided upon. They purposefully tried to manipulate stakeholders (cf. Törnberg & Chueri, 2025).

The CAP was heavily criticised domestically by the political opposition, climate scientists, economists, government authorities, the environmental and social justice movement, business associations, citizens and editorial writers in leading national newspapers, for its lack of short- and medium-term domestic action, manipulation of information, and a large focus on new nuclear power and climate compensation in other countries (von Malmborg, 2024a, 2024c; Ergon et al., 2025).

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SWEPA, 2024) claimed that Tidö policies lead to increases of annual GHG emissions, corresponding to more than 10 % of Sweden’s total annual emissions, and that the CAP will not suffice for Sweden to reach the target on climate neutrality by 2045, nor Sweden’s responsibilities in relation to EU’s 2030 climate target.

Besides domestic criticism, Tidö climate policies were criticised also internationally, claiming that Sweden is losing its role as climate policy frontrunner and risk dragging the EU down with it. Due to the Tidö climate policies, Sweden dropped from number one to number eleven between 2021 and 2024 in the Climate Change Performance Index (Burck et al., 2024). The European Commission has rejected Sweden’s application for SEK 40 billion funding from the EU Recovery Fund since Sweden will meet neither national nor EU climate targets for 2030. In March 2025, the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) mentioned in its review of Sweden’s environmental policies that “recent policy shifts, particularly in the transport sector, have put into question Sweden’s ability to meet EU and domestic climate targets, with emissions projected to increase” (OECD, 2025).

Summarising the extensive critique towards Tidö climate policy, the lead editorial in Sweden’s largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, stated in mid-June 2025 that “it is obvious that the government’s policy is not an accident. It is a deliberate climate fiasco”.

4.2. Use of Nasty Rhetoric

Historically, the environmental movement has been strong in Sweden, with the Swedish Association for Nature Conservation (SANC) being established already 1909. In the 1970s, SANC became more political alongside the establishment of Swedish branches of international organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace. With scientific reports on the consequences of climate change becoming emergent, climate justice movements have been formed, among which Fridays for Future (FFF) raised global awareness.

Following the footsteps of Greta Thunberg and FFF, the Swedish climate justice movement now counts tens of organisations with different strategies. In common for people engaging in climate justice actions, fear and anxiety for the climate emergency described by climate science – that the human era on the earth may end – combined with anger about the lack of action in society, made them engage and become climate activists. They realised they must do something and speak on behalf of potential victims of climate change, including themselves, but also for those who do not have a voice, particularly children.

Drawing on climate science, climate justice activists raise concerns and shape opinions about the “climate emergency”, calling upon politicians and business leaders to “tell the truth”, and “act now” to “end fossil fuels” (von Malmborg, 2024a). Increasingly critical to the hegemonic norm of neoliberal economics and economic growth, these activists are angry and fight for the sake of the climate, social justice and human rights of current and future generations – climate justice (von Malmborg, 2026). As in other countries, Swedish climate activists use different peaceful protests and acts of civil disobedience, to criticise and raise opinions about the government’s, and companies’ lack of action to reduce GHG emissions, thus contributing to climate change crimes and ecocide (Berglund & Schmidt, 2020).

Climate activists used to criticise previous governments led by S and the Green Party (MP), raising their voices and protest the state and companies who violate their responsibilities regarding climate change (cf. ICJ, 2025). But they were met with little ado. Politicians took notice and continued. Post 2022 elections, reactions from the government changed. Instead of taking the science-based arguments of activists seriously, inviting them to policy discussions, the new prime minister, cabinet ministers, leading politicians in the Riksdag, neoliberal thinktanks and far-right media and their supporters, initiated campaigns of nasty rhetoric targeting climate activists (von Malmborg, 2026). Climate activists were insulted of being “irrelevant” and “hippies estranged from the world”, accused of being “climate extremists”, “totalitarian terrorists”, “saboteurs” and “a threat to democracy”, intimidated and threatened to be “sent to prison” and “executed”. A few activists have been assaulted, some have been fired or replaced in their jobs, and many more have been prosecuted and sentenced to fines or prison.

Using their democratic right to protest and demonstrate, including performing acts of civil disobedience, climate activists have become victims of nasty rhetoric, from hate speech to hate crime and hard repression. They are hated, partly for what they do, but mainly for conflicting political preferences on climate policy and economic policy, representing to the Tidö government the ’evil’ that will destroy Sweden and the Swedish (von Malmborg, 2024c, 2026).

Climate activist organisations and individuals are the main, but not the only, targets of Tidö nasty climate politics (von Malmborg, 2026). Oppositional politicians, particularly from the Green Party, climate scientists, climate journalists and officers in public service engaged with climate change, are also targeted. Green politicians are “strawmen” that should be “killed”. Climate science is described as “just an opinion” and climate scientists as “propagandists”. Swedish established media is accused of being “climate alarmist propaganda centres” belonging to a “left-liberal conspiracy”, and female climate journalists are a “left pack” and “moron hags” that “will be raped”. Such insults, accusations, intimidations and incitements are often made openly, mainly in social media from official accounts of ministers and other politicians. Intimidations and incitement targeting climate activists are also made in national radio, on the streets, and in political debates in the Riksdag.

Hate speech in Swedish climate politics has resulted in hate crime in terms of physical violence, but also to increased legal and economic state repression of climate activists. In spring 2022, Extinction Rebellion (XR) reported that five masked people attacked a climate action, and that one activist had been assaulted, following infiltration and doxxing organized by a neo-Nazi party. Between September 2020 and September 2024, 310 climate activists were prosecuted in Swedish district courts for different crimes related to civil disobedience, some of them several times. Of these, 200 persons were convicted, mainly to fines or suspended sentence.

In 2022, a leading SD politician, now chair of the industry committee in the Riksdag, and the former M spokesperson on legal policy issues, now minister of migration, accused climate activists performing roadblocks at demonstrations of being “saboteurs”, and that they should be charged for “sabotage” instead of “disobedience to law enforcement”. This change was later supported by the current minister of justice, saying that the actions of climate activists must be seen as sabotage so that they can be “sentenced to prison”. In 2022, without change of legislation, prosecutors around Sweden suddenly began to charge climate activists performing roadblocks at demonstrations for sabotage. Between summers 2022 and 2023, 25 persons were convicted for sabotage in district courts, some of which were sentenced to prison, but most were later acquitted in the Court of Appeal. The state prosecutor brought the case to the Supreme Court, who ruled in July 2025 that roadblocks at climate demonstrations are not to be seen as sabotage in view of the Swedish anti-sabotage law. The law entered into force during World War II to criminalise large-scale sabotage of critical infrastructure, e.g. destruction of railways or bridges. In response, SD’s spokesperson on legal policy immediately announced that the anti-sabotage law should be revised during 2025, to clarify that roadblocks can be seen as sabotage. He also proclaimed that climate activists arrested at roadblocks more than once should be imprisoned indefinitely. In addition, one activist has been dismissed from work at a national agency after harassment and threats from her predecessor, others have been moved and replaced at work. Two climate activists, living in Sweden but citizens in other EU member states, have been denied Swedish citizenship or threatened with deportation because of their activism.

Obviously, leading Tidö politicians try to criminalise climate activism, claiming their actions are acts of sabotage and terrorism. This has legal implications. Classifying road blockades as sabotage and climate activists as saboteurs gives the police the right to use crime prevention measures such as eavesdropping people without concrete suspicions of crime. It provides the opportunity to prosecute a person for sabotage just for planning a road blockade, which has happened in the UK.

4.3. Harms of Nasty Rhetoric

Harms of nasty rhetoric are found on different levels, from the individual person being targeted and victimised, to group level and sociopolitical level, with negative consequences for liberal democracy. Aware of differences between different groups of victims, Figure 2 illustrates the complex relationship between different elements of nasty rhetoric and the different kind of harms, from emotional to cognitive and behavioural to democracy related harms. These harms are described below.

4.3.1. Harms on Individual and Group Level

There are similarities but also differences in emotional, cognitive and behavioural effects on the different groups of individual victims (von Malmborg, 2026). Climate journalists and non-activist climate scientists, targeted as individuals for what they do professionally, report threats of being fired, physical violence and death threats, beyond insults and accusations. They react with fear of crime and being followed or chased, insecurity, anxiety and exhaustion, but also anger. To cope with mental stress, many of them withdraw from the public debate or change research area or job. They self-censor. But some get angry, bite the bullet and try to win the battle. They strike back with insults and accusations, showing with the eye of a child and based on science that the offenders are wicked and naked like the emperor. Scientists’ and journalists’ reactions with fear and insecurity are in line with research on Swedish hate crime based on other motives, e.g. anti-feminism, sexual identity and ethnicity (Hagerlid, 2021; Atak, 2022; Ilse & Hagerlid, 2025).

In comparison, climate activists are targeted for their political opinions and actions in leisure time, outside their professional occupations. They are targeted with insults, accusations, intimidations and incitement, mainly as a group, less so as individuals. The same holds true for science activists, where the activism is performed in their leisure time, not at work. When targeted as individuals, it is primarily through victimization from legal and economic repression – a late stage of nasty rhetoric – more seldom incitement about physical violence or death threats. One exception is Greta Thunberg, who has experienced plenty of hate and threats based on climate scepticism and misogyny. Some activists react with fear and choose to revert to more friendly actions, while others, particularly the core group activists react with anger and plan new actions repeatedly, while eventually getting physically exhausted. Their fear and anxiety are related to the climate emergency, which made them climate activists in the first case. They react with anger to nasty rhetoric since their offenders continue to deny the climate emergency. They also react with a sense of schizophrenia and physical exhaustion since they find it difficult to combine job, family, court trials and climate actions ‘while the Earth is burning and flooding at the same time’.

Targeted as a group, climate activists seem to spur each other to learn individually and collectively to ignore insults, accusations, intimidations and incitements. They undergo a process of desensitisation (cf. Soral et al., 2018). They are less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced toward hate speech offenders, finding nasty rhetoric to be part of a larger strategy orchestrated by (far) right-wing politicians to polarise and break down society and democracy. They are strengthened in their conviction that they are right, and the offenders wrong, about climate change and climate policy. They are more afraid and anxious about the climate emergency. They also get angry because politicians and business leaders are not acting appropriately fast and ambitious given the severe situation. Fear, angst and anger about social, economic and political inaction to curb climate change made them climate activists. Instead of being silenced by nasty rhetoric, they do more actions and are radicalised according to far-right politicians.

Compared to climate scientists and journalists, climate activists and scientist activists are victimised twice. First by hate speech, second by the hard state repression through economic and legal violence being fired, denied citizenship, prosecuted and sometimes sentenced for more severe criminal acts. Climate activists testify about hateful and threatening behaviour of individual police officers. This resembles experiences of legal estrangement among racist hate crime victims in Sweden (Atak, 2022).

The message effect has large impact, particularly on civil servants and journalists engaged in climate change. Leading Tidö members of the Riksdag have claimed that non-political staff in the Government Offices and national agencies are activists, taking employment to drive their private agenda. It has also been found that leaders in SD have an exclusion list of people they want to fire from the Government Offices for having wrong opinions. This is similar to, but far behind the Trump administration’s Project 2025 to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favour of far-right extremist policies. More civil servants feel anxious about getting involved in the climate debate, of saying what they think. In line with the intentions of the perpetrators, a widespread culture of silence and self-censorship has taken hold. People obey and give in before anyone has explicitly demanded it. Many state employees have testified about widespread fear, and that the climate issue is polarised and difficult to discuss. The fear of some kind of repression from the employers has made more than 150 civil servants in over 20 national agencies, regions and municipalities, many of which have key roles in climate policy, to form a secret climate network.

In summary, victims to nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics respond behaviourally in two main ways, mirroring the basic behavioural reactions to hate, i.e. fleeing or fighting:

• Silence and self-censoring, i.e. withdrawing from public debates, ending civil disobedience, changing job, or changing research area.
• Resistance and radicalisation, i.e. increased argumentation for climate action, strike-backs with nasty rhetoric, more actions of civil disobedience, or radicalised climate actions such as sabotage and trespassing security objects.

4.3.2. Harms on Liberal Democracy

The emotional and cognitive harms lead to different behavioural responses of victims that harm liberal democracy in multiple ways. As shown in Figure 2, these take place in different stages where one leads to the other, also with feedback loops that strengthens the effects or invoke new kinds of nasty rhetoric. Nasty rhetoric further the pernicious polarisation of society and politics, reducing the pluralism of ideas and opinions on a policy issue to two. In common, nasty rhetoric violates the victims’ fundamental, liberal human right to dignity and equality.

When scientists, science and even universities are threatened by the far-right and withdraw from controversial research or public discussions, it restricts the flow of information to the public and risks leading to perspectives on climate change and climate policy that are considered controversial by the far-right populists being weeded out (von Malmborg, 2026). Attacks on journalists and more generally public service and independent media can also discourage free formation of opinion and critical scrutiny of power. Journalists receiving hate and threats risks that investigations are not carried out and important facts are never published. Consequently, citizens loose important information. Tidö parties have also proposed that public service journalism in the future must be evaluated by external reviewers and adapt the content to a certain type of populist political opinion, which goes against basic journalistic principles of impartiality, neutrality of consequences and truth-seeking (Bjereld, 2024). As a response, Swedish public service television and radio have decided not to keep their climate correspondents, effectively reducing the dissemination of information and knowledge about climate change and climate policy to Swedish citizens.

Lundquist (2012) highlights the perils of a silent public administration. Freedom of expression in the public workplace is a guarantee that political decisions made are based on the best expert input and are implemented legally and professionally. The fact that civil servants speak out thus becomes a very important political instrument of control and connects to the democratic norm of transparency in the administration and the government. It constitutes a very important part of democratic governance. Public administrations restricting what information they communicate externally not only undermines the epistemic quality of government policies but also reduces the flow of important information that could help people shape an opinion and scrutinise politicians and hold the accountable for their decisions. Restricting the flow of scientific knowledge and information, communicated by scientists, state agencies or independent media and exchanging it with deepfake may invoke knowledge resistance (Strömbäck et al., 2022). To far-right populists, their (deepfake) will represent the “Only Truth”, as compared to the “opinions” of scientists.

In all, silencing critical scientist, journalists and civil servants, poses grave challenges for the functioning of and may erode liberal and deliberative democracies by further (i) marginalising certain societal groups, and (ii) undermining free formation of opinion and democratic processes by corrupting political discussions and citizens’ mutual empathy and respect for people and politics (von Malmborg, 2026). This in turn undermines two central norms in liberal democracy (cf. von Malmborg, 2024a):

• Accountability, i.e. citizens’ ability to evaluate public policy, hold political representatives accountable and make informed votes; and
• The legitimacy of public policy the democratic system as such.

Nasty rhetoric targeting climate activists, including science activists and activist civil servants, is different from that targeting non-activist climate scientists and climate journalists. The early phases of nasty rhetoric, focusing on hate and threats, have soon come to be accompanied with hard legal and economic repression by the state. The direct effects on democracy are somewhat different, but in the end, they lead to the same overall harm.

The new legal praxis in Swedish lower courts, sentencing climate activists performing roadblocks to prison for sabotage is a threat to human rights and freedom of demonstration. Since the change was proposed by leading Tidö politicians in 2022, several climate activists felt that this change in the judicial system was an act of political commissioning of SLAPPs. The ambitions of Tidö politicians to criminalise climate activism, claiming their actions are acts of sabotage and terrorism, has legal implications as it provides the police with the right to use crime prevention measures such as eavesdropping people without concrete suspicions of crime in case of sabotage and terrorism. It provides the opportunity to prosecute a person for sabotage or terrorism just for planning an action.

Not seeing climate actions such as road blockades as a right to demonstrate is a deliberate choice in an anti-liberal and authoritarian direction, where constitutional rights are at stake. The right to demonstrate is a central building block in every democratic society. It is protected in Swedish constitution and through several international conventions. Even civil disobedience is covered by the right to demonstrate if violence is not used, why the new praxis is disproportionate. Limitations of constitutional rights may only take place in the manner specified in the constitution, and a restriction of constitutional rights may not extend so far that it constitutes a threat to the free formation of opinion.

A similar development of increased state repression of climate activists is seen in other European countries, e.g. Austria, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The UN special rapporteur on environmental organisations’ rights, Michel Forst, expresses well the impact of nasty rhetoric and nasty politics targeting climate activists (Forst, 2024, p. 11):

By categorising environmental activism as a potential terrorist threat, by limiting freedom of expression and by criminalising certain forms of protests and protesters, these legislative and policy changes contribute to the shrinking of the civic space and seriously threaten the vitality of democratic societies.

Accusations of climate activists being terrorists were intensified in April 2025, when SD’s spokesperson on legal issues proposed that climate activists are prosecuted for terrorism instead of sabotage, which if they are found guilty would render prison in four to eight years. The shrinking of the civic space by equalling demonstrations to sabotage or even terrorism and imprisoning activists reduces the number and plurality of voices in the public debate. It also reduces the possibility for other people to critically learn about climate change since activists are conveying the messages from climate science. In all, this reduces free formation of opinion, public deliberation and citizens ability to evaluate public policy, hold politicians accountable and make informed votes. In the end, the legitimacy of public policy and the democratic system as such risk being eroded.

Maintaining or building strong civil society organisations and civic education are important means to defend liberal democracy against ongoing autocratisation (Lührmann, 2021). It is therefore ominous that Tidö parties, besides attacking climate activists with more severe state repression, have changed the Swedish system of support for civic education and civil society. The state financial support to study associations, which have an important role in civic education on climate change and democracy, is deliberately reduced gradually by 30 per cent. Protest, unrest, or an organised monitory civil society, making clandestine autocratisation apparent to a wider public, may prevent or stop the autocratic ambitions of the government (Laebens & Lührmann, 2021). Tidö parties’ attacks on civic education and civil society organisations, such as Civil Rights Defenders and XR, are an important organising principle for a societal transformation that goes deeper than individual decisions and budget items. It is part of a pattern that opposes pluralism and fundamentally liberal and deliberative democracy. In Tidö Sweden, climate policy is obviously culture policy and the Tidö parties are aware of how a liberal democracy can be dismantled in a very short time (Lagerkvist, 2024; von Malmborg, 2026).

4.4. Reversing Offender–Victim Roles

Acts of hate speech and hate crime in climate politics are systematically used by leading politicians, who can propose and decide on legislation, to harm and silence their political opponents. They motivate coordinated acts of nasty rhetoric at different levels of aggression by referring to the evil of their opponents who are ‘destroying Sweden’. Nasty rhetoric is used to punish their enemies, people and organisations in the outgroup. This can be interpreted as perpetrators of nasty rhetoric blaming the victims of wrongdoing in an act of DARVO. Perpetrators are often deflecting blame and responsibility by denying or minimising the harms of their wrongdoing and attack the victim’s credibility, thereby reversing victim and offender roles such that the perpetrator assumes a victimised position and declares the victim to be the true perpetrator.

Climate scientists, climate activists and climate journalists that analyse, describe and convey a message of the severity of climate change, being critical of the government’s climate policy and calling for stronger climate action to reduce or avoid climate change victimisation, are denounced as evil enemies to the nation. As populists, the Tidö parties assume a position as spokespersons for the ‘people’ who are described as victims of strong climate policy and declare that pro-climate advocates are threatening Swedish citizens way of living, a security threat, a threat to Swedish democracy and climate terrorists. Reversing the roles, the Tidö parties and their followers do not appear as evil and strong, but as responsible saviours of the nation. In the manipulative political rhetoric of the Tidö parties, climate scientists, activists and journalists should be punished for their crimes, while the pure and good people are weak and the real victims.

5. Implications for Green Criminology

Politics is not only about the substantial policies and legislation developed and adopted. It is also about the governance structures and policy processes in which policies and legislation are formulated and adopted. The case of Swedish climate politics shows that a national government and individual ministers and other political leaders can commit criminal acts of different kinds and character, so far treated in different subdisciplines of criminology: (i) climate change crime, (i) hate crime and (iii) democracy crime. These are linked to each other in a system of criminal acts (Figure 3) that could be studied in an integrated way to better understand the crimes and victims in climate politics. Green criminology and related victimology could be expanded by drawing even more on critical and cultural criminology and victimology to address all aspects of climate politics.

This paper highlights the importance address topics such as power and politics in (a) the contestation of space, transgression, and resistance, and (b) the way(s) in which crime is constructed and represented by the media, including DARVO and criminalisation of victims. (cf. Brisman & South, 2013; Brisman, 2014). As addressed by Davies (2014, 2018) and particularly von Malmborg (2024a, 2024b), the climate justice discourse broadens the perspective on victimisation beyond harm of climate change itself. Policies or measures to mitigate climate change as well as political processes may have negative social or economic impacts on vulnerable groups of people in a local community, a region, a nation or globally.

5.1. Climate Change Crime

The entering office of the Tidö government marks a shift in Swedish climate politics, substantially and process-wise. After decades of increasingly ambitious climate policy and reduced GHG emissions, several policies have been adopted that increase GHG emissions and undermine possibilities to meet the Swedish long-term climate target of net-zero emissions by 2045. The CAP, presented in December 2023, provides further evidence that Tidö climate policy violates international obligations set out by ICJ.

Official statements by SWEPA (2024), SCPC (2024, 2025) and the Swedish Financial Policy Council (SFPC, 2024) make it obvious that the government and SD do neither act with due diligence and nor use all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out in Swedish jurisdiction from causing significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment. The Tidö parties’ climate policy fails to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic GHG emissions. Thus, their lack of climate actions and ambitious enough climate policies can be considered a climate change crime. Climate activists have also filed two court cases (Auroramålet)6, first in 2022 second in 2026, accusing the Swedish government/state of committing climate change crime.

5.2. Hate Crime and Democracy Crime

Criminal acts in Swedish climate politics do not stop at climate change crime. Instead of taking serious the science-based critique and arguments of climate scientists and climate activists for a more ambitious climate policy, inviting them to deliberations on climate policy, leaders of the Tidö parties, neoliberal thinktanks and far-right media and their supporters, initiate campaigns of nasty rhetoric targeting pro-climate partisans, climate activists, climate scientists, climate journalists and civil servants engaged in climate policy. Climate activists in particular are also criminalised by the Tidö parties, claiming that they are saboteurs and incite attorneys to charge them in court for sabotage. When the Supreme Court ruled that roadblocks are not sabotage, leading Tidö politicians claim that the law will be changed and that they should be prosecuted for terrorism. The aim is to silence them, eliminate them from influencing politics in a liberal democracy.

There is no coincidence that people in these groups are targets of nasty rhetoric. It reflects well the strategic approach of SD and other Tidö parties in radically changing Swedish climate policy and governance. The target groups have important roles for developing strong climate policy and the functioning of a liberal democracy. Climate scientists provide scientific knowledge on climate change and climate policy, further conveyed by climate activists and climate journalists. Climate scientists, climate activists and pro-climate partisans can scrutinise and criticise current climate policies and provide alternative, more ambitious policy proposals. Climate journalists report about climate change and climate policy in media, making information on current climate policy available to people and voters that can hold the Tidö parties accountable. By getting rid of these groups, the Tidö parties hope to be able to continue demounting Swedish climate policy.

Many of the expressions of nasty rhetoric occurring in Swedish climate politics are potentially criminal under Swedish law, either as toxic language, hate crime, democracy crime or influence crime directed at real people. The perpetrators could be reported to the police and investigated for crimes. But for this to happen, those who are victimised by nasty rhetoric must see themselves as victims of nasty rhetoric. An individual hatred or threat, or expression of violence in any form, can be seen as part of a structural attempt to violate the fundamental values of democracy and the principles of human rights. Crimes that threaten democracy are also committed in the form of physical violence, and illegitimate legal and economic state repression violating human rights of climate activists.

The linking of hate crime and democracy crime to climate change crime highlights the relevance of analysing the politics of climate change and climate politics, and the harms caused by the state–corporation nexus setting the rules of the market and to what extent climate change shall be prevented. Climate change criminology pioneer, Rob White, claimed that addressing state–corporate harm (White, 2018, p. 97):

requires a political understanding of class power and a rejection of formally legal criteria in assessing criminality and harm. As such, it implies conflict over definitions of conduct and activity, over legitimacy of knowledge claims, and over the role and use of state instruments and citizen participation in putting limits on corporate activity.

The systematic use of nasty rhetoric in contemporary Swedish climate politics is very much part of the conflict over definitions of conduct, legitimacy of knowledge claims and citizen participation in the public policy debates.

5.3. Victims and Victimisation in Climate Politics

Reflecting on the relation between victims of climate change crime and victims of hate speech and hate crime in climate politics, climate justice activists became activists in response to inappropriate action of governments and companies in dealing with climate change. They see themselves and their children, but also people all over the world and their societies, as potential victims of environmental crime, climate change crime and ecocide (Davies, 2014, 2018; White, 2018). They are potential victims using their agency to act. The same holds for climate scientists and climate journalists, providing and spreading more knowledge about climate change, its effects on different scales, how it can be mitigated, how societies can adapt to climate change events, and what leaders and societies do and do not to deal with climate change.

Being active victims of climate change crime, they also become victims of nasty rhetoric used by perpetrators who want them silenced. Beyond hate speech, they are also victims of SLAPPs when leading Tidö politicians claim that activists are saboteurs and terrorists and thus trying to criminalise their democratic human rights, such as freedom of speech and right to demonstrate. They are victimised after being falsely criminalised on cultural grounds, harming them as individual people, their movements and in the end, society and democracy. Thus, climate politics include criminal acts that imply victimisation of partly the same people but in different ways, at different levels, different time horizons, and of different severity.

The notion of an ‘ideal victim’ has been criticized in the case of domestic violence (Duggan, 2018), but also international criminal law (Schwöbel-Patel, 2018). I argue that it can also be criticised in relation to victimisation through nasty rhetoric, where leading (right-wing populist) politicians systematically use hatred, threats and violence to silence political opponents and violate their human rights. The view and understanding of what is and what is not a crime, and how victims and victimhood are conceptualised, reflects, according to critical criminological research, political power and political interests. In today’s victimological research, the view of the ‘ideal victim’ has been developed by addressing not only the characteristics of the victim and the relationship between victim and perpetrator, but also the victim’s sense of threat and subsequent coping. The interests and values of society at the time of victimisation are also considered.

Since victimisation is considered a balance between the severity of harm and the level of resilience (Green & Pemberton, 2017), one may ask if any of the crimes are more malicious and harmful. This is not easy to answer. The perspectives are many. To climate activists and most climate scientists, climate change is the most serious threat to humanity and ecosystems. In comparison, victimisation of individual activists and scientists through nasty rhetoric may seem paltry. Radical climate activists claim that they do not consider themselves as victims. They do not want to be martyrs. Their position on victimisation can also be seen in relation to that of ‘ideal victims’ in the ‘attention economy’ associated with neo-liberal capitalism (cf. Schwöbel-Patel, 2018), which is just as much about attraction as it is about distraction. As there is a politics of grabbing peoples’ attention for certain victims, Schwöbel-Patel argues that there is also a politics of distraction from victims of structural violence at play. The increased attention to some victims renders other victims invisible. Climate activists refrain from seeing themselves as victims of nasty rhetoric to avoid making victims of climate change crime less visible.

But nasty rhetoric has negative, potentially detrimental effects on liberal democracy. Hate speech and hate crime turning into democracy crime. The harms of nasty rhetoric on liberal democracy may inhibit the just transition to combat climate change (cf. Lindvall & Karlsson, 2023; von Malmborg, 2024a.) Without liberal/deliberative democracy, there may be no climate justice. Which crime is then most malicious? Drawing on Schwöbel-Patel (2018), an attention-grabbing version of reality portrayed with the vulnerable and weak, dependent and grotesque victim of climate change could be seen as a form of distraction. Such a distraction may blind the individual citizen–consumer to other social injustices, such as the autocratisation and violations of human rights, which cannot be addressed by invoking an ‘ideal victim’ for the purposes of prosecution and perhaps reparation. Emotions achieved through ‘recruiting’ spectators and bystanders to the climate crisis, can prevent or delay the questioning of unequal social structures causing other pressing harms.

The Swedish climate justice movement argues that the parliamentary election in 2026 must be a climate election. I agree that curbing climate change is extremely important. But I believe that the 2026 parliamentary election needs to focus on democracy. Should we be able to rebuild the democratic institutions and norms that have been destroyed since 2022, or should Sweden continue the path towards autocracy like the United States. The United States that, after Trump’s inauguration as president in January 2025, is no longer considered a democracy.

So far, only case nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics has been filed in court. The discourse on victims and victimhood from nasty rhetoric in climate politics is currently not mature enough for this to happen. The media discourse focuses on democracy as the main victim, not the real people and organisations targeted. This could be attributed to DARVO and the fact that victims of hate crime and nasty rhetoric do not meet the stereotypical norms of an ‘ideal victim’. Two engaged climate journalists began to write about individual victims of nasty rhetoric, but they were silenced by their editors (Röstlund & Urisman Otto, 2025). Mainstream media seems to be afraid and anxious of being engaged, to be accused of ‘activism’. Consequently, voices of victims are silenced.

5.4. Green Criminology as Criminology of Politics

As shown in this paper, there are systemic links between different sorts of crimes in climate politics, which raises questions about criminals and victims in a democracy. Hate crime and democracy crime is defined and addressed differently in different jurisdictions and polities. The same holds true for democracy crime.

Considering hate crime and democracy crime in Sweden, it seems that there is legislation in place to curb some expressions of nasty rhetoric targeting elected politicians and climate journalists, but not climate scientists and climate activists. The scoping of victims of democracy crime is too narrow, disrespecting the role of scientists and social movements in a democracy. Whether climate activists or other private individuals who are exposed to hatred and threats for their political views fall within the hate crime provision “other similar circumstance” is unexamined.

As for democracy crime, the Swedish Security Services shall protect the constitution. The task is to counteract actors who, through harassment, threats, violence, coercion or corruption, try to influence the functions of the democratic system of government. The activities aim to counteract unauthorised influence on political decision-making, the implementation of political decisions or the free public debate. The operational mission of the Swedish Security Services is to:7

prevent terrorism and other ideologically motivated crimes that pose a security threat or that threaten our basic democratic functions, regardless of whether the underlying causes are religious or political. It can be about people, groups and organisations that encourage or use violence, threats and harassment to change society.

If these aims, missions and tasks are to be taken seriously, the Swedish Security Services and other actors in the judicial system should address not only hate crime and democracy crime targeting elected politicians. Such criminal acts are also performed by elected politicians, targeting scientists, activists, journalists and other people using their democratic rights to protest and criticise current policy and governance. Democratically elected politicians can act in anti-democratic ways, and it is the task of the judicial system to safeguard the constitutional democracy.

Outlining the role of climate change criminology, White (2018, p. 139) emphasises “the role of criminologists as public intellectuals and political activists, and the necessity that there be stewards and guardians of the future”. The same holds true for researchers in other strands of humanities and social sciences studying climate change, to perform humanities and social science activism (von Malmborg, 2026).

In a similar sense, I argue that green criminology expanded should serve as a sounding board for political activism. Criminologists should highlight and address gaps in legislation and the legal system as such when politicians elected to serve liberal democracy turn out to act in illiberal ways harming democracy and the rule of law. While Lynch and Long (2022) call for green criminology to focus on the political economy, the crimes and victimisation of climate politics call for green criminology to focus on ideologies and governance styles in politics.