A critical analysis of the Northern League's ideographical profiling

Abstract

This essay takes an innovative approach in analysing the Northern League's populist ideology. The analytical focus is on the use of posters in its ideological construction of itself and ‘others’. An analysis of the league's posters is significant for three reasons. First, the league's rhetorical construction of the ‘other’ is integral to the development of its own identity. Posters are used to highlight the ‘imagined’ distinct aspects of northern Italian identity. Second, the league's attack on the ‘other’ reinforces its broader narrative of representing and embodying the interests of a colonized and exploited ‘people’. Thirdly, it structures the grammar in its populist ideology of ‘us against them’. This grammar functions as ‘a nodal point – i.e. it delimits and qualifies – that gives sense to the rest of its ideological repertoire’. Strident attacks on ‘them’ have helped the League crystallize its ‘us’.