Extreme right-wing populism in Europe: revisiting a reified association

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• extreme right
• Europe
• discourse
• Essex School
• France
• Netherlands

Acknowledgements

This paper has been composed within the context of the ‘POPULISMUS: Populist Discourse and Democracy’ research project (2014–2015). POPULISMUS has been implemented at the School of Political Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki within the framework of the Operational Program ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’ (Action ‘ARISTEIA II’). Many thanks are due to Ioanna Garefi for her technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yannis Stavrakakis is Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was the Principal Investigator of the POPULISMUS research project (2014-5) and is co-convener of the Populism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (UK). His work focuses on psychoanalytic and discursive political theory and on the analysis of populist and anti-populist discourses. Previous books include Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999) and The Lacanian Left (State University of New York, 2007). His forthcoming book is entitled The Populist Scandal and he is also currently editing the Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory.

Giorgos Katsambekis was a POPULISMUS doctoral researcher and is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Political Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research interests include contemporary political theory, discourse analysis, populism, social movements, and Europe’s radical left. His work has appeared in the Journal of Political Ideologies, European Political Science, Constellations, The Political Quarterly, and Political Studies Review. He recently co-edited the volume Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today (Ashgate, 2014).

Nikos Nikisianis has a natural sciences background and his PhD thesis involved a discursive analysis of the ideological dimensions of biodiversity in scientific ecology. He was a POPULISMUS post-doctoral researcher and has published on the politics of ecology, populist discourse, and the media.

Alexandros Kioupkiolis is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Political Theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and was a researcher within the scope of the POPULISMUS project. His research interests lie in modern philosophies of freedom, contemporary philosophies of justice, theories of democracy, the analysis and critique of power. Recent publications include: the edited volume Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today (Ashgate, 2014); the monographs Freedom After the Critique of Foundations: Marx, Liberalism and Agonistic Autonomy (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012) and The Commons of Freedom (Exarchia Editions, 2014).

Thomas Siomos is a journalist and is currently completing his doctorate on the political and psycho-social implications of crisis discourse at the School of Political Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was a POPULISMUS doctoral researcher and is currently coordinating the POPULISMUS Observatory.

Notes

1. According to an Essex School perspective, discourse formation involves the partial fixation of a series of signifiers (the moments of a discourse) around a point of reference, a signifier that structures their articulation: this is the operation performed by the nodal point (Howarth et al., 2000).

2. This is, of course, Cas Mudde’s definition of populism without the rather unnecessary moralistic adjectives (Mudde, 2007).

3. See, for more details: www.populismus.gr.

4. Other expert informants that agreed with this assumption were Tjitske Akkerman, Sarah de Lange and Dick Pels.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Social Fund (European Union) and Greek national funds [grant number 3217].