Cassandra from the far right: how the German and Austrian populist radical right links climate skepticism with economic issues

This article asks how two populist radical right parties, the German AfD and the Austrian FPÖ, communicate about climate on Twitter/X. Analyzing a corpus of 6,254 tweets, it pays special attention to a relatively underresearched aspect of climate communication by these actors: the way they reference the economy–in what I call ‘economic signification’–in their discourse on climate. I distinguish four narratives promoted by them, climate policies threaten the economy as a whole; they unfairly burden specific ‘deserving’ groups; climate actors pursue hidden economic agendas; and they act on misguided assumptions and lack economic competence. By combining response and process skepticism, these narratives refract a broader vision of social order, allowing these parties to present themselves as a ‘voice of reason’ in the climate debate. Economic signification allows the far right to speak in the ‘realist’, warning mode, decrying the alleged economic ‘irrationality’ of mainstream parties.