From the analysis of the genealogical articulations of the NATION IS A FAMILY
metaphorical cluster in Tudor’s editorials in the RRM, a first conclusion that can be drawn concerns the moral wholeness of the Romanian national family. In Tudor’s writings, the national family is characterised by the juxtaposition between putative ethnic ‘purity’ and Orthodox Christianity as quintessential values. This confirms the Romanian national family’s moral supremacy, which naturalises a hierarchy with the figure of (male) ethnic Romanians at the top. The analysis of Tudor’s editorials published in the RRM appears to strengthen what researchers in the field have previously shown in their analyses: the institutionalisation of masculinity in politics in general, and the aggressive and violent nature of political discourses in particular, has been a consequence of men’s unchallenged domination of the public sphere. The few women participating actively in the Romanian public sphere have been forced to adopt a masculine model of behaviour, and as such to deny their own femininity or a feminine manner when present in the political sphere; they have morphed into mothers (thereby ensuring the patrilineal descent), administrators, owners, and politicians. In short, when entering politics they had been compelled to turn into men, since the ability to be
political agents has been reified as a masculine attribute (cf. Băluţă, 2006; Chiva, 2005a; Miroiu, 2004; Pasti, 2003).
Put differently, in Tudor’s texts the NATION IS A FAMILY underpinned by deeply patriarchal values, which consolidate the distinction between men’s public visibility and their unhindered participation in politics and women’s containment in the domestic sphere of maternity and their less–than–men position in politics.
The metaphorical cluster thereby developed in a direction that portrayed women as ‘natural’ caregivers of other dependants – the offspring of their Romanian men, the elderly, the sick, and those socially disadvantaged – and confirmed Romanian men in their position of social hegemony as the epitome of political agency and financial supporters of their extended families. In the genealogical expansion of the NATION IS A FAMILY metaphorical cluster, Tudor made direct reference to those failing the conditions of being part of the Romanian national family, in the form of outside Others – the Jews, Hungarians, and Romani – and those not fulfilling the heteronormative expectations, the internal Other – the homosexuals, with particular attention being given to male homosexuality as a mark of effeminacy and degeneracy. Furthermore, the NATION IS A FAMILY metaphorical cluster was developed in the direction of depicting the Romanian national family as in need of immediate help. In such uncertain times, the future could only be safeguarded under the condition that Romanians were willing to subject themselves to his leadership, since he presented himself as the true embodiment of the STRICT
FATHER conceptual metaphor.
In the given context, Tudor’s political opponents were subject to a process of transformation into less–than–perfect Romanians, becoming some menacing internal Others usurping the upper echelons of the Romanian national construct.
More importantly, despite their eventual political superiority, the other political actors were presented as failing to fulfil the pater familias ideal: they were either hyper–masculinised – unreliable and violent – or emasculated – effeminate and thereby unworthy of the people’s trust. Among such politicians, imperfect and incomplete in their masculinities, Tudor appeared as the providential STRICT
FATHER with the messianic task of enforcing a new moral order because he was the incarnation of rightful masculine leadership. He embodied a distinguished genealogy of simple and righteous people, understanding the common citizens and truly representing their needs. He was able to defend the family folk and their century–old Christian Orthodox beliefs against the threat of dissolution and degeneration, posited by ethnic, religious and sexual Others. Indeed, the heteronormative matrix was kept in place and proved flexible enough to allow for ever more coordinates of exclusion.
6 WHEN THE FUTURE ALREADY HAPPENED
40. THE COMMON SWEDE RECLAIMING THE FOLKHEM (2005–
2010)
In this chapter I analyse the discursive manifestations of radical right populist ideology in the Swedish context. I begin by presenting the specificities of the established democratic multi–party regime in Sweden, indicating the particularity of the Swedish constitutional monarchy system of government. I then introduce the main parties in national politics. Under these circumstances, I focus on the political importance of the concept of folkhem (the home/house of [Swedish]
people) – taken to materialise the NATION IS A FAMILY conceptual metaphor in Sweden – from its conservative origins to the social–democratic emancipatory interpretations as the epitome of Swedish welfare model. On this matter, I show the construction of the folkhem with the aid of the allegedly Swedish values of solidarity and gender equality, which disguise according to researchers, an updated version of gendered heteronormative hierarchy. I then discuss the increasing ethnic diversity of those building and inhabiting the Swedish home, and show the growing opposition in radical right populist quarters to transforming the folkhem into an open construct. In so doing, I juxtapose the naturalisation of a modernised family–centred patriarchy represented by the folkhem with the parallel processes of reinterpreting gender equality ideals, redefining the boundaries of the welfare state, and an emerging nationalism. Consequently, I introduce the main radical right populist force in Swedish politics, its leader, and the party newspaper.
Investigating the genealogical articulations of the NATION IS A FAMILY conceptual metaphor in Sweden, I analyse at first the alleged moral wholeness of the folkhem.
I then show the centrality afforded to Lutheran Christianity in consecrating the inherent Swedishness of the folkhem and how this generates the moral superiority of the Swedish national family. This facilitates the subsequent analysis of the various positions within the Swedish national family afforded to its members: the place of family dependants, the role of women in the life of the national family, the threat posited by the family’s Others (be them persons with migrant background or members of the LGBTQI community), and the position of the Swedish man in this context. In so doing, I analyse the discursive effects of constantly reinterpreting the NATION IS A FAMILY conceptual metaphor, and the specific conceptual metaphor depicting the masculinity performative of the Swedish radical right populist leader in the metaphorical cluster created in this manner. I then conclude the chapter emphasising the particularities of radical right populist discursive articulations in Sweden.
40 The title is a direct translation from Swedish of a book by Jenny Andersson (2009b), in which she has investigated the Swedish social–democracy’s dilemmas in the wake of globalization, and the longing after a ‘lost future’, the future so tangibly embodied by the folkhem at its zenith.