Kogo powinni się bać Polacy? Czyli o konstrukcji wroga w narracjach Zjednoczonej Prawicy

Abstract

Whom Should Poles Fear? The Construction of an Enemy in the Narrative of the United Right The article’s main objective is to analyse the statements made by politicians from the United Right regarding their methods of arousing social fears and generating an enemy. The starting point is the concept of three levels of fear proposed by Martha Nussbaum: fears arising from actual events that create uncertainty, the displacement of fear onto someone/something unrelated to the actual problem but serving as a convenient substitute (scapegoating), and the employment of the idea of a hidden/imaginary enemy. These three aspects are applied to analysing narratives concerning refugees, Donald Tusk and the LGBT+ community, and “gender ideology”. These narratives align with the concept of “fear management”, understood as a manipulative strategy that aims to eliminate undesirable ideas/groups from the discourse by arousing fears towards specific phenomena and individuals, while positioning those in power as guarantors of security. The research material is also examined through the lens of Niklas Luhmann’s (2009) information selection criteria, whose concepts of social systems and the reality of mass media are adopted as the guiding theory.