Love as a key emotion for the far right? Environmentalism, affective politics and the Anastasia ecological settler movement in Germany

Abstract

Research usually links the rise of the far right to a variety of negative emotions, especially fear and anger. This article analyses the case of the far-right ecological settler movement community Anastasia which, in the context of environmental activism, discursively centres on the positive emotion of love. Our key theoretical contribution is to highlight the importance of love for far-right mobilization while disentangling different functions of love discourse. We add an original perspective to debates on the role of emotions, far-right mobilization and environmentalism by highlighting the relevance of (a) the explicit rejection of negative emotions, (b) the creation of ‘spaces of love’ in rural areas and (c) love as a discursive tool of legitimization. Methodologically, we rely on an analysis of primary text sources such as novels and Anastasia publications as well as on semi-structured interviews. Our findings are important for understanding the growing phenomenon of ‘authoritarian sustainability’. Moreover, they also shed new light on the emotional underpinnings of the contemporary wave of far-right mobilization in party and protest politics more generally.