Eirikur Bergmann

Anastasiya Astapova

Andreas Önnerfors

Asbjørn Dyrendal

Annika Rabo

Kasper Grotle Rasmussen

Hulda Thórisdóttir

This book explores the relevance of conspiracy theories in the modern social and political history of the Nordic Countries. The Nordic countries have traditionally imagined themselves as stable, wealthy, egalitarian welfare states. Conspiracy theories, mistrust and disunity, the argument goes, happened elsewhere in Europe (especially Eastern Europe), the Middle East or in the United States. This book paints a different picture by demonstrating that conspiracy theories have always existed in the Nordic region, both as a result of structural tensions between different groups and in the aftermath of traumatic events, but seem to have become more prominent over the last thirty or forty years. While the book covers events and developments in each of the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland) it is not a comparative country analysis. Rather, the book focuses on conspiracy theories in and about the Nordic region as a region, arguing that similarities in the trajectories of conspiratorial thinking are interesting to examine in cultural, social and political terms. The book takes a thematic approach, including looking at states and elites; family, gender and sexuality; migration and the outside view on the Nordic region; conspiracy theories about the Nordic countries; and Nordic Noir. This book will be of great interest to researchers on extremism, conspiracy theories and the politics of the Nordic Countries.

Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries

Onoriu Colăcel

Corneliu Pintilescu

Tamás Scheibner

This collection of state-of-the-art essays explores conspiracy cultures in post-socialist Eastern Europe, ranging from the nineteenth century to contemporary manifestations. Conspiracy theories about Freemasons, Communists and Jews, about the Chernobyl disaster, and about George Soros and the globalist elite have been particularly influential in Eastern Europe, but they have also been among the most prominent worldwide. This volume explores such conspiracy theories in the context of local Eastern European histories and discourses. The chapters identify four major factors that have influenced cultures of conspiracy in Eastern Europe: nationalism (including ethnocentrism and antisemitism), the socialist past, the transition period, and globalization. The research focuses on the impact of imperial legacies, nation-building, and the Cold War in the creation of conspiracy theories in Eastern Europe; the effects of the fall of the Iron Curtain and conspiracism in a new democratic setting; and manifestations of viral conspiracy theories in contemporary Eastern Europe and their worldwide circulation with the global rise of populism. Bringing together a diverse landscape of Eastern European conspiracism that is a result of repeated exchange with the "West," the book includes case studies that examine the history, legacy, and impact of conspiracy cultures of Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, the former Yugoslav countries, and the former Soviet Union. The book will appeal to scholars and students of conspiracy theories, as well as those in the areas of political science, area studies, media studies, cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, and history, among others. Politicians, educators, and journalists will find this book a useful resource in countering disinformation in and about the region.

Tropes and Trends

Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe

Informed by ethnographic fieldwork in an authoritarian regime, this book shows how jokes and rumors remind communities of their fears, support paranoia, shape conformist behavior, and, consequently, reinforce the existing hegemony. In this study on everyday life in a repressive regime, Anastasiya Astapova unveils political humor as it is lived.

Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State

Anastasiya Astapova

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