Right-wing Populist Discourse Research Articles

Bordering Inclusion and Exclusion in the Discourses of Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour

This paper focuses on the discursive construction of borders and discourses of exclusion and inclusion in French right-wing populist discourse. It elaborates on the idea of the politicization of borders in contemporary political communication and their symbolic meaning as an expression of national sovereignty, security, and identity. Using the approach of discourse analysis, the author investigates how bordering discourses were employed by Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour during the 2022 presidential campaign. The empirical analysis focuses on the parties’ programs, candidates’ discourses, and their social media communication. This offers valuable insights into how political actors construct borders and shape ‘us’ and ‘them’ groups.
 Keywords: populism, discourse analysis, borders, othering, inclusion, exclusion.

Feeling the Truth: Emotions and Digital Truth-making within Right-wing Populist Networks on Twitter/X

Based on an investigation of how everyday users participate in right-wing populist discourse on social media platforms, this article explores the emotional practices that shape and legitimise purported truths about the threat posed by Islam to the Western world. The article builds on the findings of an online ethnography of a right-wing community of users on Twitter. Drawing on a practice theory approach of emotions that considers the properties of social media platforms, we argue that right-wing populist claims to truth do not function in a linear way. The emotions mobilised in this context do not solely focus on rejection and exclusion. Rather, right-wing populist truth-making is a complex process in which emotional practices of inclusion and exclusion are interwoven. 

Borderless fear?

Abstract Studies have highlighted differences between right-wing populism in Western and Central Eastern Europe but suggested that discourses have been converging since the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. This article examines this claim by focusing on right-wing populist frames and affective communication on migration in Austria and Slovenia. Taking a communication-centred approach, the study is based on a critical frame analysis of 70 speeches from far-right to centre-right parties in parliamentary debates on migration between 2015 and 2019. The results show that right-wing populist discourses in the two adjacent countries have aligned in appealing to affects, particularly to fear and in framing migration as a threat to security and culture. Despite differences in mobilizing affects, the findings indicate a mutual alignment of right-wing populism beyond borders, signalling a potential risk of a broader right-wing populist bloc unified by fear of migration.

Multiscalar strategies in right-wing populism: a comparison of West European parties in borderlands

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates the heuristic value of using a multiscalar perspective to analyse right-wing populist discourse, especially in borderland regions. While it is commonly posited that right-wing populist ideology implies a Manichean dichotomy between in- and out-groups, this study reveals that right-wing populist discursive strategies can thrive in multiscalar contexts. To substantiate this claim, the article conducts a comparative analysis of the discourses employed by a set of right-wing populist parties in borderland regions of Western Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings highlight that although these parties’ discourse predominantly revolves around the national scale, there is a complex interplay among subnational, national, cross-border and supranational scales. By advocating for the reinstatement of border controls during the crisis, European right-wing parties engage in scalar reconfiguration.

From criticism to conspiracies: The populist discourse of COVID-19 sceptics in Germany’s Querdenken community on Telegram

Telegram is a central space for unifying far-right actors and ideology, activists and movements, alternative media, conspiracies, and Coronavirus scepticism. While much research has focused on network dynamics and topic modelling, there is a scarcity of large scale, in-depth content analyses. The present research examines this environment through a semi-automated content analysis of German COVID-19 protest movement Querdenken on Telegram, to determine discursive features of the politicisation of this public health crisis within Querdenken’s communities. The analysis of 1.4 million chat messages shows that key elements of right-wing populist discourse can be detected in several sub-communities. The people and the homeland are antagonised by the corrupt, oppressive elite. Within this environment, politicised anti-COVID-19 restrictions narratives combine with populist discourse, distributed from Querdenken channels via general information channels, connecting to activist, protest, news, lawyer, and doctor-themed chats. Within these channels, external links lead towards publications promoting far-right ideology and conspiracies.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Literary Resistance to Right-Wing Populist Discourse in Grand Hotel Europa (2018)

ABSTRACT Right-wing populism has been on the rise in Europe for the past two decades. The success of populist strategies has generated a broader discursive shift in news coverage about immigration as simplifying and polarizing strategies have been incorporated into mainstream media. This paper discusses how Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer offers resistance to the discursive structures of right-wing populist discourse in his 2018 novel Grand Hotel Europa. More specifically, it analyses the novel’s late postmodernist politics of literature, which emerges from its reflection on the future of Europe. This reflection, which revolves around two forms of hospitality dominating Europe’s border politics, i.e., immigration and tourism, addresses and subverts the main topoi and tenets of right-wing discourses. In doing so, the novel spurs its readers to engage in critical thinking, reject simplistic solutions to layered problems and foster debates on Europe’s identity and future in the 21st century.

Intersecting hostilities around the European migration crisis: the case of Carola Rackete and the Sea-Watch 3

ABSTRACT On June 29, 2019, Carola Rackete docked the rescue ship Sea-Watch 3 on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, in defiance of a ban imposed by Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. The migrants rescued by the Sea-Watch 3 had been blocked at sea for the previous two weeks, making it to international headlines and sparking a heated debate around sovereignty and humanitarianism in the face of the European migration crisis. On her arrival, Rackete was arrested for refusing to obey a military vessel and aiding illegal immigration. This paper investigates social media and international news discourses around the Sea-Watch 3 docking, to be regarded as a critical incident capable of catalysing attention and generating a significant media resonance. Results show how both social and traditional media contributed to the proliferation of misogynous attacks against Captain Rackete, at the intersection between right-wing populist discourses of Italian ‘sovranism’ and European anti-immigrationism. By triangulating the role of the media, intersectional hostility and populist ideology, this paper sheds light on how these three factors feed into each other in the discursive construction of the ‘Fortress Europe’ of present times.

The Right-Wing Perspective: Populist Frames and Agenda on Facebook in Central and Eastern Europe

Political and public debates unfolding online provide various spaces for interaction between political actors, citizens and media outlets. This environment can be employed for diverse agendas, frames and biases, especially within populist narratives. This work examines the discourse of Central and Eastern European right-wing populists from Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland (2015-2021). To identify discursive patterns within public Facebook posts (n=192,057) by 31 party, movement and partisan news media pages, created by API interrogation, right-wing discourse is analyzed through semi-automated quantitative content analysis based on text mining, in conjunction with qualitative content analysis of messages that generated the highest engagement-rates (n=80). Key findings indicate both national and international narrative patterns with a focus on political, social and ethnic opponents, by incorporating Engesser et al.’s (2017) core elements of right-wing populist discourse within Master Populist Frame building (Heinisch & Mazzoleni, 2017), thus marking the contemporary agenda of European right-wing discourse.

“Representing this Ossi-thing”

In this article, we argue that German rap music can open up insights into current social negotiation processes surrounding the topic of post-migration. By emphasizing “ost” (literally “East”) in “p-ost-migration”, we propose adding a regional perspective to current debates on the concept of post-migration. Such a perspective considers the specific lifeworlds that characterize the living-together in diversity in Eastern Germany. Based on an exploratory study, we put our empirical focus on the growing Eastern German rap scene and show that “Eastern Germany” is playing an increasing role for rappers as identity-forming spatial category, especially since the migration summer of 2015. Our analysis will propose that a reference to “the East” can be used both as a means to take a stand against racism and as a means to feed into current right-wing populist discourses and excluding definitions of “Heimat” (“one’s home turf ”).

Die globalistische Elite gegen das Volk. Antisemitismus und rechtspopulistisches Elitenbild

Abstract In the social sciences, it is often argued that in right-wing populism anti-Semitism does not play an important role and that cultural racism has taken over its function. In contrast, this article aims to show that right-wing populism reproduces anti-Semitic patterns in a codified form. First, it will be shown that problematic definitions and explanatory approaches are widespread in social science discourse, which contribute to the fact that the anti-Semitic content of right-wing populism is barely perceived. Subsequently, by analyzing two case studies – an essay by AfD politician Alexander Gauland and a speech by Donald Trump – it is shown that right-wing populist discourses asserting a struggle between the people and the »globalist elite« reproduce anti-Semitic patterns even though »Jews« are not explicitly mentioned. Finally, it is argued that this phenomenon can be grasped with the concept of structural anti-Semitism. With this term, it can be made clear that right-wing populism indeed has an anti-Semitic potential and that the contents and functions of anti-Semitism and racism must be distinguished.

Lexical Features of German Right-Wing Populist Discourse

This article is devoted to the analysis of the specific features of modern German right-wing populist discourse, that are manifested at the lexical level. The relevance of the study is substantiated by stronger positions of right-wing
 populist organizations in the political arena of Germany, which has been steadily observed over the past decades, as well as the insufficient study of German rightwing populist discourse from a linguistic point of view. In this study, an attempt is made to present a list of nominative units typi-
 cal for the type of discourse under consideration and to demonstrate the condi-
 tions of their use by the strategic nature of political communication. The article reveals the concepts of political discourse and right-wing populist discourse as
 its variety, communicative strategy, tactics and means. The use of various lexical means is illustrated by excerpts through the texts of the main German right-wing populist organizations, namely the Alternative for Germany party and the Pegida, a socio-political movement. As a result of the study, the author makes a conclusion that at the lexical level in the texts of German right-wing populist discourse one can trace its difference from the entire political discourse as a whole. Various means of secondary
 nomination with pejorative or positive connotations prevail, which is associated with their special power of influence on the recipient, while the common means of primary nomination are represented mainly by proper names, namely polytonyms and anthroponyms. In addition, the study concludes that the lexical level of right-wing populist discourse reflects its heterogeneity.

The Landscape of Hate – Olga Tokarczuk in Populist Discourse in Poland

This article discusses how Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018, has become a target of right-wing populist discourse, locating her at the centre of the landscape of hate. The features of the affective landscape of hate are discussed from the phenomenological and constructivist perspective. The author argues that the landscape of hate constitutes an important part of right-wing populism based on the narrative of national emergency and the language of war and exclusion (othering).

When COVID-19 circulates in right-wing populist discourse: the contribution of a global crisis to European meta-populism at the cross-border regional scale

ABSTRACT The success of European Right-Wing Populist (RWP) parties is related to a context of crisis, offering the opportunity to mobilize antagonisms between the people, the elite and a series of ‘others’ . Studies have been carried out to find out how populist parties have reacted to COVID-19 in Europe. However, it is still unknown whether these parties have used the pandemic to intensify a European ‘meta-populism’; that is, a European upscaling of the antagonistic discourse involving people-centred in-groups and elite/others-related out-groups. The current article explores how representatives of RWP parties located in three different states (France, Germany and Luxembourg), but in the same European cross-border region (the Saar-Lor-Lux area), mobilized COVID-19 to potentially structure a European meta-populism. Following a broad analysis of the discourse on COVID-19 produced on each side of the border during the initial phases of the pandemic (February to August 2020), the research is based on a Critical Discourse Analysis of characteristic narratives. It is shown that in such a context, the virus became an integral element of a European meta-populist discourse. However, the identity of the European in-groups and out-groups can be different across borders. These different entities can also be associated with different European spatial scales.

‘The jobs all go to foreigners’: a critical discourse analysis of the Labour Party's ‘left-wing’ case for immigration controls

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines how senior figures in the UK Labour Party and wider labour movement discussed the topic of immigration in the immediate aftermath of the UK's vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Influenced by the Discourse Historical Approach, the paper is based on an analysis of 86 public interventions by Labour figures, over a 6-month period, delivered in speeches, articles and essays. The paper examines argumentative strategies adopted by Labour figures – including Members of Parliament, advisors and trade union leaders – who called for stronger immigration controls from an avowedly ‘left-wing’ perspective. Foregrounding their commitment to progressive politics, Labour politicians argued that restricting the number of migrants entering Britain was democratic, anti-racist and an expression of the Labour Party's commitment to the interests of working-class people. Nevertheless, it is the contention of this paper that the Labour Party's rhetoric tapped into right-wing populist discourses which constructed immigration as a threat to the racialised privileges of a ‘white’ working class.

Exploring Populism in Times of Crisis: An Analysis of Disinformation in the European Context during the US Elections

Electoral contests around the world are suffering from an increasing distrust triggered by the dissemination of conspiracy theories. Extant research on political communication has largely studied this phenomenon, but, in some cases, it has neglected the relationship between social and legacy media in the breakthrough of a radicalized populism. Based on a wide literature review of liberal democracy and the roots of populism, this study addresses the right-wing populist communicative actions as one of the causes of the fragmentation of the democratic system, defining a journalistic and fact-checking standard to promote a well-informed society. Specifically, our research focus is to illustrate the impact of populist rhetoric on the traditional media system through a multiple-case study applied in European countries affected by right-wing populist discourse following the last United States elections (2020). The results show a connection among the strategies (game frames) used on Twitter, being less clear in the number of retweets and the presence on the front pages of newspapers. These data serve as a guide to build a journalistic indicator, arguing that high-quality information could be the key for democratic systems to minimize populist rhetoric and tackle the disinformation that endangers their future.

Reclaiming the People: Counter-Populist Algorithmic Activism on Israeli Facebook

This article examines a new form of resistance to right-wing populist discourse on social media which I define as counter-populist algorithmic activism. Practitioners of this type of activism exploit platforms’ automated ranking mechanisms and interface design to bolster the online visibility of counter-populist voices. By so doing, activists seek to stymie the digitally mediated spread of right-wing populist rhetoric and advance an alternative, non-exclusionary vision of “the people.” To explore this nascent form of resistance, this study draws on a year-long online ethnography of a Facebook group of Israeli activists called Strengthening the Left Online. Through an observation of the group’s activities during 2017, as well as interviews with its main administrator and other left-wing Facebook users, I elucidate the distinctive nature of the motivations, strategies, and goals that guide counter-populist algorithmic activists.

Right-wing populist affective governing: a frame analysis of Austrian parliamentary debates on migration

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the ‘summer of migration’ of 2015, right-wing populist discourses became increasingly commonplace. This article by Thiele, Sauer and Penz investigates the resurgence of nativist and anti-migration attitudes in Austria by focusing on parliamentary debates between 2015 and 2019 concerned with migration, asylum policies and integration measures. Their theoretical approach builds first on Cas Mudde’s conception of right-wing populism—which proceeds from the premise of corrupt ‘elites’ and threatening Others—and then combines it with theories on the politics of emotion and affects. By employing a critical affective frame analysis, the study examines how right-wing populist arguments by political actors are always intertwined with affects, like anger, fear and hope, in order to mobilize followers and voters. They regard these connections as governing strategy aiming at right-wing exclusion, a mode of governing through affects, which tends to change the affective atmosphere in Austria, that is, what is conceivable, speakable and feelable with regard to migration and refugees. As it turns out, not only the notorious Freedom Party (FPÖ) (with a longstanding far-right tradition) but also the refurbished People’s Party (ÖVP) under their new leader Sebastian Kurz, draw on discourses that are exclusionary as well as affective, encouraging the Austrian population rather to fear migrants and to feel anger, in order to mobilize them against threatening ‘migration waves’ and ‘illegal immigration’.

Gender, Populism and Anti-Immigrations


 
 
 In current struggles over cultural hegemony, conservative and right-wing populist dis- course is marked by an omni-presence of topics related to gender and sexuality. This article examines the ways in which diverse actors of what will be called the ‘right-wing populist complex’ use gender in order to catapult a variety of arguments into the public sphere with particular focus on actors in the Americas and Germany. Suggest- ing a first set of Right-Wing Populist Patterns of Gendering1, the article pursues the question how seemingly emancipatory arguments function in right-wing discourse, especially in performing a modernisation paradigm, while simultaneously, and in of- ten paradoxical ways, promoting a program of re-traditionalisation. Therefore, often, gender arguments—like the sexual freedom of ‘autochtonous’ women—are used to justify anti-immigration and racist politics. One’s own society can thus be depicted as supposedly already fully emancipated in contrast to the alleged ‘backward’ social order of immigrants. Through this ethno-sexist twist, the article argues that gender provides right-wing populist discourse a useful tool for affectively bridging seemingly paradoxical arguments and transferring diverse social hierarchies shaped by late neo- liberalism onto the gender hierarchy of a society. Since gender as a discursive element is foundational for right-wing discourse, an analytical, systematic and intersectional gender lens—or a critical gender theory—is crucial in right-wing populism research in order to grasp patterns of gendering and their entanglements with racialisation and racist structures.
 
 

The Discursive Work of Populist Politicians: An Historical Perspective on English Populism

This paper argues that populist politics involves discursive work performed by maverick elite fractions. Bringing together literature on elites and populism and applying a methodology of discursive juxtaposition, we historicise four waves of English right-wing populist discourse: the British Brothers League (BBL) (1901-23), the British Union of Fascists (BUF) (1930-40), Conservative politician Enoch Powell’s anti-immigration campaigns (1968-75), and pro-Leave Brexit campaigns. On this basis, we identify the ontological presuppositions shared by the Brexit elite with three previous waves of right-wing populism from 20th C English history. In addressing the questions: who are the populists? and what do populist politicians do?, we demonstrate how, in all of these cases, outsider elite fractions engage in the discursive political work of constructing internal and external threats to the nation and its people. We contribute to the study of elites and of populism through identifying a specific populist political ontology and an associated political methodology operationalised by maverick elite fractions to unsettle established power relations in the field of national politics.

Authoritarian populism in Brazil: Bolsonaro’s Caesarism, ‘counter-trasformismo’ and reactionary education politics

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine the rise of authoritarian populism in Brazil following the election in 2018 of Jair Messias Bolsonaro to the Presidency and reflect on the consequences of his far-right-wing politics for education. Our focus is broadly on three historical blocs (with five different presidents of the Republic) which make up the policy trajectory of Brazil over the period 1995–2019. We explore the complex cultural political economy surrounding more than a decade of left-wing government by Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016) of the Workers Party (PT). In what has been described as simultaneously a tragedy, a farce, and a soap opera, Bolsonaro’s rise involves the impeachment of Dilma, accusations of corruption, the imprisonment of Lula and the resignation of multiple ministers of the government. The intersections of right-wing conservative discourse, evangelical proselytising and populist discourse in Brazil, coupled with resentment from those whose fortunes had been diminished because of declining economic competitiveness, contributed to the election of Bolsonaro in 2018. A final section focuses on the education policy in Brazil, the ways in which any progressive gains have been erased and what this means for Brazilians.