posted on 2018-02-26, 09:18authored byYannis Stavrakakis, Giorgos Katsambekis, Nikos Nikisianis, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Thomas Siomos
Revisiting the trend of identifying populism with extreme right parties, in this paper we aim to problematize such associations within the context of today’s Europe. Drawing on examples from relevant parties in France and the Netherlands, and applying a discourse-theoretical methodology, we test the hypothesis that such parties are better categorized primarily as nationalist and only secondarily–and reluctantly–as ‘populist’. Our hypothesis follows the remarks of scholars who have stressed that the central theme in the discourse of such parties is not the staging of an antagonism between a ‘people’ and an ‘elite’, but rather the opposition of an ethnic community with its alleged dangerous ‘others’. In this context, we propose a discursive methodology able to differentiate between ‘populist’ and ‘nationalist’ (xenophobic, racist, etc.) discourses by locating the core signifiers in each discourse in relation to peripheral ones, as well as by clarifying the nature of the axial antagonisms put forth.
Funding
This work was supported by the European Social Fund (European Union) and Greek national funds [grant number 3217].
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Politics and International Studies
Published in
Critical Discourse Studies
Volume
14
Issue
4
Pages
420 - 439
Citation
STAVRAKAKIS, Y. ... et al, 2017. Extreme right-wing populism in Europe: revisiting a reified association. Critical Discourse Studies, 14 (4), pp.420-439.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-01-17
Publication date
2017-04-10
Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Discourse Studies on 10 Apr 2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2017.1309325.