Reversing the Myth? Dystopian narratives of the EU in UKIP and front national discourse

Abstract

The paper examines the discourse of UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Front National on the EU from the point of view of political myth. It is argued that the discourse of the two Eurosceptic parties reverses the founding myth of the EU as a quasi-utopian haven of peace and prosperity following the traumatic experiences of World War 2, where values such as democracy, freedom and human rights can flourish. In contrast, the Front National and UKIP depict the EU in dystopian terms, as an undemocratic, even totalitarian empire, through comparisons to literary dystopias, Nazi Germany and the former USSR. In this context, the two parties portray themselves as ‘dystopian heroes’ who rebel against the stifling autocratic regime to lead their peoples to a freer, more prosperous and democratic future outside the EU.

Keywords:

• Populism
• dystopia
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Diez, for instance, has defined a normative power as a power which ‘a power that is able to shape conceptions of the normal’ (2005).

2. The allusion here may be to the so-called “ArabSpring”; it may also be towards the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968. Both comparisons may be considered unfortunate according to the logic of FN discourse, in that the “Arab Spring” has led to a rise in Islamic fundamentalism in many of the states involved, while the “Prague Spring” came to a brutal end with the invasion of Prague by Soviet troops.