Performing Parliamentary Radicalism on YouTube

The paper explores how the far-right actors, seeking parliamentary success, express their cause in online campaign videos. The cases are from Finland, where there are strong traditions of anti-elitist challenger parties and transnational extremism. The videos chosen are (a) the Finns Party (FP), a radical right party with high levels of popular support, and one of the three largest parties in the Finnish parliament Eduskunta, and (b) the aspiring party Blue-Black Movement (BBM) which includes former FP actives and those belonging to the extreme right – in contrast to another FP splinter, with its clear agenda with fascist undertones it has found difficult to gather the necessary support for becoming a parliamentary party. In our rhetoric-performative audiovisual discourse analysis, the two videos prove quite different in budget and shape, but both include similar themes and use cityscapes for communicating their message. The videos performative features and evoked political myths differ enough to make the engagement with the two meaningful for comparative analysis that can yield insights for further study politics of online meaning-making in the far-right spectrum. Despite mobilising online, the videos make use cityscapes for communicating their message through memory and belonging. Authors: Emilia Palonen, Laura Horsmanheimo, Roosa Kylli, and Virpi Salojärvi.