Spiritual Nations in the 21st Century: Rethinking Anti-Islamic Rhetoric in France and Sweden

The nominally Christian and liberal turn of the populist radical right (PRR) has been mainly interpreted as an instrumental strategy to exclude Muslim immigrants from Western Europe and renew the public image of the parties. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has served as a prime example, with the party frequently referring to the incompatibility of radical Islam with the principles of liberty and laïcité. The paper opens a novel path of interpretation to the anti-Islamic rhetoric of the radical right by critically reviewing the alleged secularism of two PRR parties, the National Rally (RN) and the Sweden Democrats (SD). Both parties have used republican principles such as liberty and equality along with the Christian tradition to rework national myths of a chosen nation. By examining the political and electoral programs of the RN and the SD from 2011 to 2022, as well as the speeches of the respective party leaders Marine Le Pen and Jimmie Åkesson, I argue that the RN and the SD have sought to restore what Charles Taylor calls a neo-Durkheimian political identity. After the model of the late 19th century republican and mid-20th century social-democratic movements, the parties campaign for a strong state that continues to reign over the spiritual domain of citizens. For the RN and the SD, the anti-Islamic rhetoric is a key medium for restoring older notions of sacred in modern societies based on the secular principles of equality and liberty. By portraying Muslims as the derogatory embodiment of the "globalist" or “multicultural” order, the parties repeat the pattern of 19th and 20th century anti-Semitic nationalist movements. This pattern assists in spiritualising the idea of national belonging by using equally spiritualised images of internal religious enemies and a decadent counter-order. A rhetorical analysis of the party texts demonstrates that without dogma and rituals, the subtle political strategies of the RN and the SD hardly fit the definition of a “secular religion”. However, their model of the nation-state amounts to a moral authority with spiritual significance for its members.