Ontological (In)security in the Rassemblement National’s dystopian narrative of the EU

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the two most recent extended manifestos on Europe (2019) of the French populist radical right party Rassemblement National (RN), previously known as the Front National (FN), from a narrative perspective. The perspective used is based on the Narrative Policy Framework’s focus on the setting, plot, characters and moral of the narrative combined with a generic approach. Rather than the ‘classical’ genres of tragedy, comedy, romance and satire, however, this study focuses on the narrative elements of the dystopian genre, and argues that the RN’s narrative on Europe broadly resembles fictional dystopian narratives. In dystopian narratives, the inhabitants find their ontological security threatened by a dehumanising, authoritarian regime, in this case the EU. It is in the ‘green world’, a timeless space outside the limits of the dystopian state, here represented by the RN’s proposed European Alliance of Nations, where the dystopian hero recuperates their sense of autonomy and identity. Such narratives, through exacerbating an already widespread sense of anxiety and ontological insecurity, are potentially powerful attempts to frame continued membership in an unreformed EU as a threat to security.