Everydayification of Nativist Political Violence: a Product of the Political/discursive Opportunity Contradiction

In the literature on the structural causes of political violence, a common conclusion is that open political opportunities decrease the risk that radical flanks resort to violence. The assumed mechanism is that available channels for political influence make ‘radical’ protest forms redundant. Activists that have access to political influence will have less incentive to take matters into their own hands. Applied to far-right and nativist movements, the hypothesis is that reduced marginalization and growing influence of far-right parties should lead to fewer acts of violence. However, existing research also supports an alternative hypothesis: that open discursive opportunity structures increase such violence. In other words, when acts of nativist violence are likely to gain attention, disseminate, and even gain support in public discourses, activists may perceive violent options as more legitimate. The contradiction arises because political and discursive opportunities for the far right often expand simultaneously. Do these effects cancel each other out? In this paper we argue for another outcome: that the combination of expanding political and discursive opportunities for nativist politics produces a qualitative shift in nativist political violence. Drawing on a unique dataset of reported nativist violent hate crimes in Sweden, we identify a trend towards the everydayification of such violence. This means that violence is less often committed by subcultural or political groups, and more often spontaneously by individual perpetrators in everyday situations.