Populist discourses in the Hungarian public sphere

Abstract

AbstractExtendingLaclau’s (2005)claim to the importance of ‘populism’ for a democratic politics, I argue that the ‘we’, when issued from a left-wing position around ‘empty signifiers’, must be informed by an inclusionary logic. In my critical study of the Hungarian Government’s right-wing populist discourses, I show that their billboard campaign in 2016 against the European Union’s migrant quota articulates the ‘we are not like them’ exclusionary distinction of ‘against and over’. Through Judith Butler’s category of vulnerability and Mary Matsuda’s relative distinction between immediate and indirect targets of exclusion, I explore the inclusionary logic of the campaign by the Two-Tailed Dog Party. I demonstrate that a non-identitarian collective subject "from below" in their alternative left-wing populism is made possible by the power of irony that may sidestep the mobilising force of fear that should legitimise the Government’s agenda.