Icebergs and icescapes have long been iconic in climate imagery (O’Neill, 2020) – imagery which has recently been complemented by representations of the climate activist Greta Thunberg. Such imagery is of particular relevance in our increasingly mediatized world in which the persuasive nature of visuals is often taken for granted. Indeed, this persuasiveness is pointedly summarized by Joffe (2008: 86), who argues that a visual ‘is emotive, absorbed in an unmediated fashion, vivid and memorable, and “proves” the authenticity of the event depicted’. It is due to these characteristics that scholars in the fields of environmental/climate change communication have increasingly analysed the uses of imagery (for reviews, see Hansen, 2018; O’Neill & Smith, 2014).

Yet, while substantial research on environmental/climate change-related imagery exists, and while there has long been research on visual analysis of far-right communication (for recent examples, see Doerr, 2021; Hokka & Nelimarkka, 2020; Freistein & Gadinger, 2020), the emerging field of study on environmental/climate change communication by the contemporary far right (Mudde, 2019) is only now beginning to take a ‘visual turn’ (see Forchtner, 2023). Such analysis is, however, crucial as visuals play a leading role in propagating, maintaining and bolstering far-right ideologies (their problem definitions, interpretations and solutions) in society at large, including anti-progressive environmentalist attitudes and worldviews. Indeed, images not only convey knowledge and articulate (far-right) subjectivities, but construct ‘appropriate’ emotions too as Joffe, in the above quote, makes clear. And, as we shall see, images of Greta Thunberg, rather than icebergs, appear to play a crucial role.

Against this background, this chapter proposes a pathway forward into analysis of environmental imagery to deepen our understanding of how visuals operate in furthering far-right agendas at this crucial moment in time. More specifically, the chapter does so by providing a case study of the German far right. This case promises relevant insights in light of Germany's lively contemporary far right, particularly the recent emergence of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and a long history of (research on) imagining and politicizing the link between nation and nature in far-right frames. This stretches from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, and furthermore includes National Socialism (with its complex, contradictory history regarding environmental aspects), and renewed efforts to ‘make ecology right again’ during the second half of the twentieth century as well as the early twenty-first century (see Biehl & Staudenmaier, 1995; Geden, 1996; Olsen, 1999; Forchtner & Özvatan, 2019). In analysing the German far right, this chapter furthermore proposes a mixed-methods architecture which can serve as a starting point for further analyses of visual environmental communication by the far right. Drawing on wider visual environmental communication research, this is achieved by taking three complementary perspectives (from quantitative content and frame analysis to qualitative semiotic analysis), and asking the following research questions: ‘Which themes dominate far-right visual climate change communication?’, ‘What frames are utilized in the investigated communication?’ and ‘How are knowledge and subjectivities constructed via these images?’

Responding to these questions, this chapter, first, introduces proposed methods of data collection and data analysis. Secondly, it analyses the corpus of images from three perspectives, considering themes, frames and semiotic details. This analysis illustrates that, for example, the German far right is considerably invested in Othering Thunberg and what she represents, clearly trumping concern over icebergs. Here, I draw on the concept of melodrama, which I will elucidate later, to understand far-right meaning making, thus adding to existing scholarship by discussing how melodramatic Othering is visually constructed. The chapter closes with a summary of findings.

Methodology

This analysis of visual climate change communication draws on images taken from five key print media across the German far-right spectrum over a period of 18 months, from July 2018 to December 2019. These sources are instrumental in the ideological reproduction of significant parts of the far right in Germany and include: the least extreme, weekly Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom), of which, because of the high number of articles published, I only consider texts from the front page and its focus, background, forum, and nature and technology pages. Junge Freiheit is accompanied by the monthly Compact and the monthly Zuerst! (First!) – all three support the AfD (in varying ways). Also included are the monthly party newspaper of the extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany (since 2023: The Homeland), Deutsche Stimme (German Voice) and the ecological quarterly Umwelt & Aktiv (Environment & Active; ideologically and personally, the magazine was connected to the National Democratic Party of Germany and closed at the end of 2019). Given the explorative nature of this case study, this corpus will be analysed as one instead of considering these sources separately, though it is worth noting that subsequent studies should address potential differences between rather radical and rather extreme actors (as well as between, for example, party and non-party actors).

More specifically, this corpus comprised regular articles, short columns and advertisements for previous issues (while excluding book reviews and letters to the editors) which featured ‘climate’ (e.g. Klimawandel [climate change] and Klimaerwärmung [climate warming]) and/or ‘CO₂’ in the title, the lead paragraph or as superimposed writing in the title image. Consequently, terms such as ‘energy transition’, ‘diesel’, ‘ecology’ and ‘Thunberg’ alone were not considered sufficient. This kept the corpus concerned with the general phenomenon, thus avoiding a biased set of data as, for example ‘Thunberg’ would have introduced a particular focus. The period investigated is realizable in the context of one chapter, enables analysis of climate change communication prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, and includes key events, such as the rise of Thunberg/the Fridays for Future movement and the European Parliament elections in May 2019. Thereafter, I isolated all images (photographs, scientific figures, cartoons, infographics and artistic representations) from these texts, only excluding images of journalists next to their regular column/editorial. This resulted in a corpus of 97 texts, of which 69 contained at least one image – 166 images in total. ¹ Compact features 51 images across 19 articles, Junge Freiheit 50 images across 39 articles, Zuerst! 32 images across 15 articles, Deutsche Stimme 19 images across 13 articles, and Umwelt & Aktiv 14 images across 11 articles.

Drawing on and combining procedures utilized in the wider literature on visual environmental communication (Culloty et al., 2019; Rebich-Hespanha et al., 2015; Wozniak et al., 2015; DiFrancesco & Young, 2011), I subsequently analysed the material from three complementary perspectives, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. First, I conducted a descriptive content analysis: what actors (individual and collective ones), policies and technologies, elements of nature as well as graphs and figures are present in the analysed images (one image can contain more than one theme, see DiFrancesco & Young, 2011). While the approach to coding was inductive, emerging themes proved largely in line with findings on non-far-right images by others (e.g., DiFrancesco & Young, 2011; Rebich-Hespanha et al., 2015; Metag et al., 2016). Simultaneously, I coded the positive or negative valorization of images (with only two of them coded ‘unclear’) by considering the status of the depicted within the entire text.

Secondly, I carried out an interpretative frame analysis, utilizing, again, the method of quantitative content analysis. Within the analysis of visual communication of environmental issues and, especially, climate change, there is a rich literature on frame analysis, though the concept of frame is not always transparently utilized or demarcated from other concepts (for an overview, see Schäfer & O’Neill, 2017). I therefore draw on Entman's (1993: 52) definition: ‘to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation’. I identified such frames inductively, though they ended up being largely in line with observations present in the existing literature on far-right climate change communication (e.g., Forchtner, 2019). In coding image frames, I coded only an image's dominant frame. While images might convey more than one frame, this was a pragmatic decision in light of the interpretative nature of the analysis. I considered only the image, any superimposed written text and the image's caption text when deciding the frame (for other cases of such coding, see Culloty et al., 2019; O’Neill, 2013) as, in the context of this study, I wanted to avoid reproducing meaning conveyed through the written mode. Instead, I focused on the semiotic contribution made by an image (which is not to deny that an image's meaning might ultimately depend on its written context too).

Thirdly, I provide a qualitative analysis of two images to understand their persuasiveness, how, through semiotic choices, they construct subjectivities. The selection of these two images is informed by the results of step two: that is, I analysed images conveying the two most frequent frames. This analysis draws on categories proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and their claim that images construct different kinds of imaginary social relationships between their producer and their receiver; the viewer and the represented subject; and the represented subjects themselves. That is, images play their part in constructing viewers’ subjectivity as, first, images ‘demand’ or ‘offer’: the former happens through, for instance, direct eye contact between represented subject and viewer (‘demanding’ something from the viewer) while the latter positions the viewer as an ‘invisible onlooker’, turning the depicted into an object of one's gaze (Kress & van Leeuwen (2006: 119). Secondly, frame size affects social ‘closeness’, ranging from close enough to touch (‘personal distance’) to close enough for interaction (‘social distance’) and further away (‘public distance’). Thirdly, angle can convey hierarchy: a low angle tends to indicate the superiority of the represented subject in relation to the onlooker, while a high angle does the opposite. In addition, a frontal angle, in relation to the represented subject, invites full involvement, while a more sideways angle, or even shots from behind, does so less. These rules have to be understood as social conventions; thus, they are not universally valid but open to adaptation and reinterpretation within particular contexts. Further semiotic choices include size, tone and focus to give or deny salience, and colour. The latter denotes persons, events and objects, and affects relationships through, for example, association. For example, the colour green is commonly linked to environmental activism in Western cultures while a colour's intense saturation can indicate intense emotion. These categories represent only a limited part of a possible methodological toolkit, though they are particularly valuable in the following analysis due to their focus on imagined relationships and the subjects which arise from them.

Thunberg, not iceberg

Starting this analysis of visual climate change communication by the far right, it is worth noting that existing research has regularly identified people as the main element in mainstream news media reporting on climate change (Culloty et al., 2019; O’Neill, 2013; DiFrancesco & Young, 2011). Is that any different from far-right imagery? Who and what populates the latter? Taking the first steps towards understanding this communication, a descriptive content analysis reveals that the theme of ‘Actors’ dominates, with 96 out of 121 being people (Table 5.1). The latter are thus by far the most significant theme in the entire corpus, something in line with the aforementioned research. However, this raises two questions: who is depicted and how?

The most numerous category of people is ‘environmentalist’; and although far-right publications have often celebrated ‘their’ predecessors in the field of environmental protection, this is hardly happening in the context of this corpus, probably due to the focus on climate change towards which significant parts of the far right, in a variety of ways, have been sceptical (e.g. Moore & Roberts, 2022; Malm & the Zetkin Collective, 2021; Forchtner, 2019; for book-length analyses with a focus on Germany, see Quent et al., 2022; Sommer et al., 2022). Indeed, only one out of the 47 images containing environmentalists is valorized positively. Eighteen images feature the Swedish climate activist Thunberg, making her the single most often pictured person. Her centrality in this corpus is in line with findings on social media posts by the AfD (Boren & Kahya, 2019) and results reported in an analysis of Swedish far-right media (Vowles & Hultman, 2021).

The second most numerous kind of people depicted after Thunberg are politicians (only three out of 14 are valorized positively), mostly German ones such as Chancellor Angela Merkel. Scientists come third, though they are worth mentioning as five out of 10 are valorized positively, thus indicating once again (Forchtner et al., 2018) that the far right has not abandoned scientific, or rather scientific sounding, claims making, but that the struggle against an allegedly oppressive hegemony is also fought in the field of science. Further persons include ordinary people and workers (6; see Figure 5.2, discussed below) and unspecific masses, primarily related to the topic of overpopulation (6). In the theme of non-people actors depicted, media, in particular the press, stand out. This element largely comprises cover pages by ‘mainstream’ news media which feature alleged scare stories of looming climate disaster (10). Fear communication has long been part of climate change communication, though its efficacy has been questioned (e.g. O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009). Yet, the far right has not only ridiculed the matter, but has also long attacked ‘the lying press’, a well-known trope since Trump at the latest, even though its use in Germany dates back much further (Koliska & Assmann, 2019).

Following Actor, the theme of Policy and Technology is divided into green and fossil fuel-related ones, the former being present significantly more often (32 and 19 times respectively). However, this does not point to a celebration of a ‘green agenda’; rather, these images are always valorized negatively. Here, wind turbines stand out as targets; they constitute 14 of these 32 elements. Indeed, turning to Nature, a third key theme, depictions of the natural environment and landscapes dominate, elements which often appear in relation to (allegedly disastrous) wind turbines. As discussed below, this concerns a typical criticism present in far-right opposition to climate change policies. Furthermore, and connected to the above comment on fear communication, while disaster-imagery exists, these visuals are used to ridicule climate action and to illustrate climate activists’ irrationalism (see below). Moreover, while we have already seen that Thunberg is ‘on display’, there are almost no polar bears, no melting ice(bergs), that is, what has otherwise counted as iconic in the context of representing climate change elsewhere (Born, 2019; Chapman et al., 2016; though O’Neill, 2020: 18 reports that the polar bear has become a ‘tired and hackneyed icon’). Thus, for the far right, communicating climate change is very much about Thunberg rather than (melting) icebergs, constructing a particular ‘problem’ which, subsequently, calls for (far-right) subjects and their solutions. Of course, this is not surprising given the agenda driving the investigated corpus: one which hardly supports climate action. For example, a polar bear might cause audiences to worry about the impact of climate change (e.g. Metag et al., 2016), though those within the far right might, in line with the written text, perceive the animal as living proof of societal hysteria.

Finally, the least common theme concerns graphs and figures which act as anchors of objectivity; or, more precisely, as simulations of ‘hard facts’ via which various types of climate change scepticisms are supported. Indeed, of the six graphs and figures, three support evidence scepticism, with others problematizing policy responses.

In a second analytical step, I approach the visual data from the perspective of an interpretative frame analysis (Table 5.2). Drawing on Entman's aforementioned definition of frame, frames act as ‘interpretative storylines that set a specific train of thought in motion’ (Nisbet & Newman, 2015: 325, italic added), ‘storylines’ which define a problem and propose ways forward. By far the most widely used frame was ‘Irrationalism’. That is, nearly 30 per cent of the analysed images fell into this category, identifying hysteria and (religious) delusion as the problem ‘caused’ by, for example, the negatively evaluated political and cultural elite, who are separated from the far right's own insights and standards of rationality and sanity. This frame is well known from research on climate change communication by the far right (Forchtner, 2019) and, concerning religious metaphors in particular, has also featured in conservative climate change communication (Atanasova & Koteyko, 2017). Othering facilitated by this frame draws heavily on depictions of Thunberg (15 of 46 images which facilitate this frame feature her). This frame (and the less often mobilized one which states ‘our’ sanity: ‘Prudence/reasonableness’) is particularly connected to melodrama (discussed below in more detail) which gives rise to subjects being ‘whole’ and ‘pure’, and in no need to engage with their continuously pathologized villains/opponents (‘madness’ and ‘sect’ are commonly used words, see Figure 5.1, discussed below).

This is also visible in the frame ‘Economic harm’ (where individual and national economic pain is viewed negatively, caused by the politics of, for instance, a detached, globalist elite and can only be halted through supporting the right, that is, Right forces), though this frame is less widespread than ‘Irrationalism’. While this contrasts with findings in other research (e.g. Forchtner & Lubarda, 2022), this is likely due to the significance of, first, Thunberg during the investigated period: she was clearly perceived as a threat, symbolizing climate-friendly societal transformation which threatens traditional masculine biographies and lifestyles (Vowles & Hultman, 2021; Hultman et al., 2019; Daggett, 2018). Secondly, the visual depiction of a person, and thus their Othering, is arguably more easily achieved than that of a process, economic or otherwise (the analysis of Figure 5.2, concerning this frame, in fact points to the rhetorical force generated by the inclusion of an individual).

Taking stock, the two main frames account for more than a third of all images and are examples of process (‘Irrationalism’) and response (‘Economic harm’) scepticism (see van Rensburg, 2015, who separates scepticism towards the status and existence of climate change from process and response scepticism towards scientific/public knowledge generation processes and policy supposed to tackle climate change respectively; for an adoption of this typology in research on the far right in the European Parliament, see Forchtner & Lubarda, 2022). Indeed, as I coded the basic stance taken by entire texts, ‘only’ 17 out of 97 contained evidence scepticism. No doubt, this is considerable, but it indicates that not even the far right is primarily engaged in what Mann (2021) calls the ‘old climate war’, that is, fighting the physical evidence of climate change.

What is furthermore notable in the context of this chapter is the way in which frames were identified (considering the image itself, superimposed written text and the caption, but excluding the title of the article and the wider text), resulting in a significant number of images which could not be coded (28 images). This does not mean that these images carried no frame. Rather, it illustrates that by not considering the wider written text as an ‘anchor’ (see Barthes, 1977 [1964: 37–41]), images are often too polysemic to be ‘correctly’ understood, that is, in line with the written mode. This is not specific to this analysis (see DiFrancesco & Young, 2011; Hansen and Machin, 2013) – and it should not lead to forgo visual analysis or only to conduct visual analysis hand in hand with full analysis of the written mode. The latter might not only go beyond what is possible in many projects, but would also run the danger of reproducing the primacy of the written mode instead of stressing what images are capable of doing. Indeed, I decided not to include the wider written text when coding frames precisely because I was interested in understanding what images alone do – and how they do it.

Let me finally comment on three intriguing, though numerically less significant ‘environmentalist’ frames: first, eight images frame responses to climate change as ‘Environmentally harmful’. This concerns, for example, the effect wind turbines have on birdlife. Indeed, while wind turbines are common symbols of changing times as O’Neill (2020) shows in her longitudinal analysis of news media in the US and the UK, pointing to the effect on birdlife has been a common means of deflection by the far right as well as other opponents of climate action, even though this argument has been put into perspective (e.g. Mann, 2021: 128). Secondly, aesthetic landscape concerns drive the negative framing of wind turbines (5). Such concerns have a long history in far-right communication about the environment and, thus, Forchtner and Kølvraa (2015) highlight the aesthetic as one of the three dimensions through which the far right makes sense of the national environment – from celebrating the beauties of ‘our land’ to the aforementioned concerns over its blight. And indeed, Hansen (2019: 46) stresses that visuals depicting the environment draw from historically and culturally resonant ideas of nature, for example romantic views, something likely to be of relevance concerning far-right imagery of, for example, the countryside and forests. Lastly, four images speak to the frame ‘Overpopulation’. The latter has, again and again, been shown to feature in far-right communication about the environment (see already Olsen, 1999), but its significance in contemporary climate change communication by the far right has been questioned (e.g. Forchtner & Lubarda, 2022). This study is no exception, though it is notable that all cases of this classic theme (which points to the ‘fate’ of race, be it understood biologically or culturally) feature in the ideologically most extreme publications of the corpus, Deutsche Stimme and Umwelt & Aktiv.

Looking back and considering the depictions of themes and frames, the far right's visual climate change communication, most clearly in the case of images of the political opponent, facilitates visual melodrama. Knowledge and subjectivity emerging from melodrama revolve around clear-cut boundaries and denial of complexity, and, thus, the polarization of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. ² Subjects arising from melodramatic narrativization are particularly characterized by untroubled wholeness and certainty, rather than ambiguity and doubt as in, for example, tragic or ironic stories. Indeed, studies have argued that melodrama is ‘the principal mode for uncovering, demonstrating, and making operative the essential moral universe in a post-sacred era by polarising good and evil, calling for the expulsion of the latter’ (Brooks, 1976: 15). Hence, melodrama facilitates a ‘“space of innocence”’ (Williams, 2001: 28) with Wagner-Pacifici (1986: 283) similarly noting that melodrama facilitates ‘intermittent identification and alienation as the audience is pulled in … to sing the praises of the “hero” but is not encouraged to contemplate or participate in a confrontation of the complexities of the moment’. Analyses of melodrama relevant in the context of this chapter have been put forward by, for example, Falasca-Zamponi (1997) on how Mussolini performed melodrama, stressing what other nations did wrong in order to hold down Italy and, turning to contemporary climate change, Daggett (2020) who lucidly speaks of far-right melodrama in the US.

Relatedly, Lubarda's (2020) conceptualization ‘far-right ecologism’ includes ‘Manichaeism’ as a core ideological element while scholars of the populist far right have emphasized the Manichaean as a crucial part of populism and its division of the world into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (e.g. Mudde, 2007: 63). However, I view the construction and nature of such sharp divides, including the antagonism between ‘pure people’ and ‘corrupt elite’, as better understood when explicitly located at the foundational level of narrative (as it is through this form that knowledge and identity are constituted). Be that as it may, the desire for moral clarity is neither limited to populism nor the far right: as I have outlined, melodrama provides certainty and untroubled wholeness on the side of the subject, separating ‘good’ from ‘evil’. As such, it has also, at times, characterized left-wing articulations, something which Anker (2014) considers in her analysis of left theory. Without doubt, melodrama has also featured prominently in environmental campaigns against, for example, nuclear energy and multinational oil and gas companies – but while melodrama's denial of complexity and polarizing force aids mobilization, the feeling of certainty resulting from melodrama does not facilitate reflexive subjectivities, as can be seen in the corpus investigated here. ³

Returning (and connecting this) to images, the latter play a key role in the construction of identity – in the case of images analysed in this chapter: single, static ones. While they cannot act as a sequence of events, they can evoke narratives (depending on the background knowledge of readers) and/or illustrate the written mode. Thus, following Ranta (2010: 1), I argue that images can represent ‘components of action sequences familiar to the beholders, sometimes only by rendering a specific, arrested moment which can activate a wider, mentally imagined event schema’. They do so, as we have heard, with vividness, emotiveness and immediacy, and thus tie together networks of associations and affects (Carah, 2014: 138). As such, they are loci of boundary making, of identity making, and recent research has highlighted the significance of digital circulation of images to reproduce emotions and identities (e.g. Hokka & Nelimarkka, 2020; Proitz, 2018). Yet, images in print media too articulate shared worlds, and emotions facilitated in sources analysed in this chapter include despising the transgressing Other and self-righteousness. The centrality of sharp demarcation and vilification of the Other facilitated via visual melodrama is visible in the overall negative valorization of the images of, for example, politicians and alternative energy sources: 135 of them are valorized negatively while only 29 are positively valorized (two are unclear).

Finally, I complete this analysis of melodramatic depictions of themes and frames via a qualitative analysis of two images which illustrate the two most dominant frames (‘Irrationalism’ and ‘Economic harm’). Figure 5.1 is a cover of Compact (November 2019), featuring Thunberg next to the writing ‘Climate madness. Revolt of the end time sects’. ⁴ The first part of the title, ‘Climate madness’, is highlighted through the use of colour, with red conventionally signifying importance/danger. This image was coded as ‘Irrationalism’ (frame), ‘Environmentalist’ (theme) and ‘negative’ (valorization), and clearly furthers a melodramatic reading. The image itself is based on a widely circulated shoot taken during Thunberg's attack on world leaders in Davos in 2019, using a filter to make the photograph look like an oil painting/achieve a particular style. ⁵

5.1 ‘Climate madness’ (Compact magazine, November 2019)

Compact cut the frame, for instance the magazine did not include Thunberg's right hand with her pointing finger, opting for a close-up through which viewers are put in personal (touching) distance. While this is potentially a way to construct social closeness, here it enables a closer look at ‘the object's’ supposedly ‘deranged’ character. Indeed, due to the facial expression, personal distance does not create intimacy, but strengthens the viewer's impression of her being aggressive and hateful. The use of a filter accentuates this and acts to ‘de-real’ her. As other shots of Thunberg exist from this event (with a similar facial expression), the camera angle too deserves attention: here, Thunberg does not look into the viewer's eyes; instead, the viewer is positioned as an ‘invisible onlooker’ as she looks off frame, away from the viewer. Indeed, van Leeuwen explains the effect of depicting a person from the side as ‘symbolic objectivation’. Hence, people represented like Thunberg are represented ‘as objects for our scrutiny, rather than as subjects addressing the viewer with their gaze and symbolically engaging with the viewer in this way’ (van Leeuwen, 2000: 333, 339).

This depiction, exemplifying Thunberg's ‘madness’, is embedded in a broader discourse infantilizing her (and the Fridays for Future movement), one through which her widespread representation as a pure steward of earth is scorned by those allegedly in-the-know. Instead of taking this activism and her emotional response seriously, viewing her outrage as a serious judgement (on emotions as ‘a potential avenue to “the reasonable view”’/reason, see Hochschild, 2012: 30 and Habermas, 1998:4f, respectively), the unsettling power of her agenda and performance is rendered as impractical and naïve by those defending the status quo. While such infantilization is a banal manifestation of ageism, it is, simultaneously, compounded by historical, handed down perceptions of women as irrational and, more specifically, hysterical (Scull, 2011). Indeed, infantilization sits at the beginning of a spectrum of misogyny, ranging from infantilization of, to violence against, women (Manne, 2019: 68). Vowles and Hultman (2021) too find Thunberg being represented as emotional and irrational, noting that such efforts resemble the treatment of Rachel Carson in the United States in the 1960s whose Silent Spring famously warned against the indiscriminatory use of pesticides.

In the context of this chapter's focus on Thunberg, Manne's (2018: 106–113) observation that women who are not happy to provide, but who demand, are experienced as a threat to what Hultman et al. (2019: 128) refer to as climate denialists’ ‘life project’, one linked to patriarchy, fossil capitalism and ‘petro-masculinity’ (Daggett, 2018), rings true. Following this line of thought, and although this is not to establish a direct line between the militant Free Corps of the early twentieth century and the far right of the early twenty-first century, the perception of women as a threat furthermore points to Theweleit's (2018: 91) analysis of male fantasies in which good women are pure, such as mothers, while others appear as, for example, hysterically aggressive. ⁶ Even more so, Theweleit (2018: 100) speaks of some men ‘assigning a penis to a certain type of woman … and fear[ing] their own castration from this penis. These men see “communism” as a direct attack on their genitals.’ This fear was connected to women supposedly carrying weapons under their skirts. While such fear is not relevant today, we can replace ‘communism’ with ‘left’ or ‘liberal’, while the weapon is Thunberg's words, an interpretation supported by the fact that her open mouth is prominently placed at the very centre of the image. ⁷

5.2 ‘The big rip off’ (Compact magazine, July 2019: 23)

Figure 5.2 is also taken from Compact, though this time the image carries the frame ‘Economic harm’ and appears at the beginning of an article, filling the upper half of the page, right above the headline (‘The big rip off’). A symbol for lack of money (empty pockets) is present at the centre of the image and further supported by the peculiar way the man's hands (especially his thumbs) are presented: turned slightly outwards (i.e. towards the viewer) as if saying ‘there is really nothing left’ and ‘there is really nothing I can do’. The lead paragraph continues this theme, claiming that ‘the CO2-tax is coming!’ and that energy will become more expensive for the ‘average Joe’ as the ‘state scoffs the citizens in order to be able to spend more money on so-called refugees’ (the caption text similarly speaks of ‘Pockets empty. Treasury full’ and the government's desire to take more money from its citizens). Yet, while this text clearly supports the way this image will be read, the image is able to speak for itself.

The image not only signifies lack of money, but also communicates loss of control which, arguably, often gives rise to feelings such as frustration, despair and anger. Given the frame size, viewers are encouraged to feel close to the man and his plight. The second feature instantly noticeable is the lack of a face. This differs sharply from Figure 5.1, especially as viewers might reasonably assume that this person is facing the viewer. And yet, this can be read as, first, lack of voice (there is no mouth; he is decapitated, voiceless, a helpless gesture being the only way to communicate), which feeds into the populist playbook of pure, ordinary people being constantly silenced by ‘the corrupt elite’. Secondly, this enables this person to become a true ‘average Joe’, representing all those to whom populists claim to give voice due to the de-individualized nature of the person. Thus, the voice of ordinary ‘citizens’ is transferred to the (populist far-right) magazine which becomes the mouthpiece of this ‘average Joe’ able to save ‘us’ from the doings of an antagonistic elite.

The fact that this is indeed an ‘average Joe’, possibly a blue-collar worker, is furthermore supported by the man's clothes: jeans and a shirt, both nice but neither trousers nor a white office shirt (with the rolled-up sleeves further indicating the man's ‘hands-on’ occupation). This interpretation is supported by the background: a former industrial site, now in ruins; presumably the reason for the man's empty pockets. Among others, the scenery includes a smokestack which commonly symbolizes industrial pollution, though this symbol, much like that of the polar bear, has been subverted by climate sceptics (O’Neill, 2020) and, in this image, recalls lost prosperity (and voice). The rather flat, dull, low-saturated green superimposed on this scenery signifies, first, distance and a broody mood – making the thriving industry a thing not directly accessible, a thing of the past to be looked at nostalgically. Secondly, it is a semiotic resource demarcating good from evil, that is, ‘us’ from those unreasonable greens who are responsible for this decline (given that today ’green’ also signifies environmentalism). Indeed, it is important to note that what this image achieves, through combining a rotten industrial site and an individual, is to signify that economic harm is done to both the livelihoods of individual workers and to the (economic) potency of the nation as it points to the often-raised threat of ‘deindustrialization’.

Finally, the composition of man and ruin also connotes a particular kind of masculinity and, as such, a link between ‘being manly’ and employment, industrial labour to be precise, which is indeed heavily connoted with a traditional understanding of masculine identity (on industrial/breadwinner masculinity see Vowles & Hultman, 2021; Hultman et al., 2019 and on ‘petro-masculinity’, see Daggett, 2018).

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued for the systematic, multi-perspective analysis of images when studying far-right environmental communication, taking climate change communication by the German far right as a case study. Looking back, what can be learned from this analysis, both empirically and with regards to the methodological procedure?

First, and responding to the study's research questions, images analysed in this case study stress themes and frames similar to those highlighted in existing work on written communication about climate change by the far right, both inside and outside of Germany. This includes attacks on people and policies and technologies – first and foremost, Thunberg and wind turbines – which the far right perceives as the real threat (instead of, for example, melting icebergs). These images frame Others as deluded, hysteric, mad or even part of a pseudo-religious cult as well as being responsible for economic harm done to the nation and its individual members. Furthermore, the dominance of these frames points to the significance of process and response scepticism which, again, confirms existing research on the written mode in far-right climate change communication. The analysis of visuals also confirms existing work on the written mode in that ideas of traditional masculinity and misogyny play a role in these representations and feed into the construction of the looking subject. Importantly, I argue that subjects emerging from these representations are melodramatic ones, ‘pure’ and ‘innocent’, which know no subtlety while guaranteeing moral clarity and righteousness. However, the fact that visual analysis appears to confirm existing findings regarding the written mode does not render it redundant. Studying other cases might (a) provide different results as the visual and the written mode might pull in different directions (see DiFrancesco & Young, 2011). Arguably more important is (b) the fact that the visual mode is emotive, vivid and memorable, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter; in short, that it is particularly persuasive in constituting knowledge and subjects. This is especially relevant as images might be the only thing which people actually consider when browsing a newspaper/magazine (or their social media accounts). Thus, understanding images provides more comprehensive insights into far-right communication. Finally, and going beyond the far right, the analysis has illustrated similarities and differences between mainstream news sources and far-right media, for example regarding the centrality of persons in images and the use of iconic symbols respectively.

Secondly, in analysing the German case, I proposed a mixed-method approach for further studies on visual communication by the far right. This approach brought together three complementary perspectives: first, a descriptive, quantitative content analysis illustrated the elements present in the investigated images. Secondly, an interpretative, quantitative frame analysis pointed to dominant (and not so dominant) ways in which these visuals are used, while, thirdly, a qualitative analysis of two images showed how detailed and systematic semiotic analysis adds to a comprehensive understanding of data. This mix adds to existing proposals regarding combinations by, for instance, Rebich-Hespanha et al. (2015), DiFrancesco and Young (2011) and Wozniak et al. (2015), and offers a foundation for further, method-related considerations. For example, while O’Neill and others have done much to illuminate the perception of climate change visuals among the wider public, this mix of methods highlights the need for the field to also consider the reception of such imagery among far-right publics. Here, too, the ‘visual turn’ in the analysis of far-right environmental communication promises key insights on the workings and effects of political ecologies of the far right.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Anders Hansen, Balša Lubarda and Özgür Özvatan, as well as the editors Irma Allen, Kristoffer Ekberg and Ståle Holgersen, for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. All mistakes remain my own.