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This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geopolitical entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space.
Focusing on recent developments, the individual chapters explore a range of conspiratorial positions related to Europe. In the current climate of fear and threat, new and old imaginaries of conspiracies such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have been mobilised. A dystopian or even apocalyptic image of Europe in terminal decline is evoked in Eastern European and particularly by Russian pro-Kremlin media, while the EU emerges as a screen upon which several narratives of conspiracy are projected trans-nationally, ranging from the Greek debt crisis to migration, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodological perspectives applied in this volume range from qualitative discourse and media analysis to quantitative social-psychological approaches, and there are a number of national and transnational case studies.
This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of extremism, conspiracy theories and European politics.
List of contents
1. Between Internal Enemies and External Threats: How Conspiracy Theories have Shaped Europe – An Introduction 2. The New European Order: Euroscepticism and Conspiracy-Belief 3. The Eurabia Conspiracy Theory 4. Metaphors of Invasion: Imagining Europe as Endangered by Islamization 5. ‘Der Grosse Austausch’: Conspiratorial Frames of Terrorist Violence in Germany 6. Denying the Geopolitical Reality: The Case of the German ‘Reich Citizens’ 7. The Fourth Reich in Europe: Conspiracy Theories about Germany in the Greek Press During the Economic Crisis 8. Populist Conspiracy Rhetoric and Arguments on EU Immigration: An Exploratory Analysis of pro-Brexit Newspapers 9. The Eternal George Soros: Rise of an Antisemitic and Islamophobic Conspiracy Theory 10. EU-related Conspiracy Theories in the Western Balkans: Gravitating Between Rejecting and Embracing Europe through Eurovilification and Eurofundamentalism 11. The Brussels Conspiracy: Narratives of EU-related Conspiracy Theories in pro-Kremlin Media 12. Culture of Fear: The Decline of Europe in Russian Political Imagination 13. Unlocking the ‘Black Box’ of Conspiracy Theories in and about Europe
About the author
Andreas Önnerfors is Full Professor of History of Sciences and Ideas and Dean of Class I, ’Humanities’ at the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Salzburg, Austria.
André Krouwel is Associate Professor of Political Science and Communication at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Summary
This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geo-political entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space.
