Paper short abstract:

This papers proposes to look at the (mis)uses of folk culture in the extremist disourse through the leses of ‘knitted eventedness’ (Henig&Knight 2023), thus creating new affordances to the folk cultures as as instrument used in political agendas.

Paper long abstract:

It goes without saying that folk cultures create a sense of belonging to the group and, in times of risk, uncertainty and rapid change, they nestle comfort against a perceived sense of undoing forms of familiar being. Particularly, in a world of polycrisis seen as a ‘complex solidarity of problems’ (Morin, 1999:74) the need for familiarity in a shifting world may kindle reappraisals of folk cultures by revitalisation, valorisation of living heritage, or the creation of new practices stemming from initial forms by reorchestrated to server a particular purpose.

Against such backdrop, the populist discourse finds a fertile soil in the appeal to folk culture as a solution to a world that changes, but, most importantly, as an instrument to amass support against mainstream politics. However, such undertaking results in creating yet another layer of contrasting opinion, pitting members of the same rather homogenous group against each other.

This paper proposes to analyse various types of extremist discourse – ranging from that of political parties with an open right-wing agenda to non-affiliated or conjunctural voices – which resort to folk culture as a last bastion of resistance to present day challenges in connection with health (global pandemics and vaccines), family, East/West divide, access to natural resources etc. In doing so, the (mis)uses of folk culture will be looked at from the angle of ‘knitted eventedness’ (Henig&Knight 2023).