The Border as a Resource in Right-wing Populist Discourse: Viktor Orbán and the Diasporas in a Multi-scalar Europe

ABSTRACT

Europe and now the United States are characterized by the growing presence of populist parties and leaders able to attract a significant share of the electorate. The successful strategy of right-wing populist politicians consists in proposing a series of discourses based on a differentiation between an endangered “Us” and a threatening “Them.” The protection of the “Us” community from the evil “Them” is often expressed through the necessity of closing the national border. This measure is a key discursive resource incorporated in their speeches. However, is the border only presented by right-wing populist leaders as a boundary which has to be controlled, securitized, and sealed? Based on the analysis of discourses produced by Viktor Orbán, the only long-standing European populist leader in power, the research shows that right-wing populist discourses can be based on opposed and complementary conceptions of the state border to entrench the opposition between “Us” and “Them.”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Băile Tușnad is the place of a large cultural event centered on the Hungarian identity organized each year at the end of July. Since the arrival in power of the Fidesz in Hungary, the Hungarian government sponsors this event and the Prime Minister delivers a speech which can be compared to a sort of rough, grass-roots, populist “State of the Union address” presenting the big challenges of the day and the position of the visionary Hungarian Prime Minister as the incarnation of the Hungarian “We” beyond borders.

2 The question of the referendum was: “Do you agree that the European Union should have the power to impose the compulsory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without the consent of the National Assembly of Hungary?”

3 Orbán was able to get 122,000 votes from postal vote coming from nearby Hungarians during the 2014 parliamentary election, but a total of 2.7 million people voted for his party, far in front of the center left and its 1.3 million voters. http://www.valasztas.hu/hu/ogyv2014/.

4 GDP/per capita in Hungary was 40% below the EU-28 average in 2015. It is ranked among the lowest ones (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Volume_indices_per_capita,_2012-2015_(EU-28%3D100)vJune.png). In parallel, 43% of those living in poverty and social exclusion are children, a proportion that has not declined in recent years according to Hungarian European Business Council (http://www.hebc.hu/en/eves-jelentesek/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lille-Nord de France Communauté d’Universités et d’Etablissements - “Bonus Qualité Recherche Internationale” 2016: Project “Discours sur les frontières étatiques de l’Europe à l’heure de la remise en cause des accords de Schengen” call for projects BQRI 2015.