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Twitting Against the Enemy: Populist Radical Right Parties Discourse Against the (Political) “Other”

Author

Listed:
  • Laura Cervi

    (Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Santiago Tejedor

    (Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Mónica Gracia Villar

    (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad Europea del Atlántico, Spain)

Abstract

There is a common agreement in considering populism as a Manichean worldview that oversimplifies and polarizes political options reducing them to a symbolical struggle between an “us” and a “them.” “Us” is embodied by “the people,” equated with “good,” and “them” is identified by political “Others,” often embodied by “the elites” who are depicted as inherently “evil.” Naturally, the nature and composition of the people and the elite vary according to both ideology and political opportunities. This article examines the discursive construction of political opponents in two populist radical right parties: Lega in Italy and Vox in Spain. Based on the analysis of a selection of tweets by the two party leaders, Santiago Abascal and Matteo Salvini, this study applies clause-based semantic text analysis to detect the main discursive representations of political opponents. The article concludes that Salvini focuses all the attention on the left, while Abascal, although predominantly identifying the left as the main enemy, also targets pro-independence parties. The discursive construction of the “enemy” is based on two main strategies: demonization, the framing of opponents as “enemies of the people” who, along with dangerous “Others” such as immigrants, conspire against the “people” and are blamed for everything that is “wrong” in society; secondly, character assassination of individual politicians through personal attacks, which aim to undermine their reputation and deflect attention from the real issues towards their personal traits and actions.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Cervi & Santiago Tejedor & Mónica Gracia Villar, 2023. "Twitting Against the Enemy: Populist Radical Right Parties Discourse Against the (Political) “Other”," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(2), pages 235-248.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v:11:y:2023:i:2:p:235-248
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Paris Aslanidis, 2018. "Measuring populist discourse with semantic text analysis: an application on grassroots populist mobilization," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 1241-1263, May.
    2. Heidi Schulze & Marlene Mauk & Jonas Linde, 2020. "How Populism and Polarization Affect Europe’s Liberal Democracies," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 1-5.
    3. Juniper Katz, 2018. "The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 35(2), pages 280-301, March.
    4. Astrid Barrio & Sonia Alonso Sáenz de Oger & Bonnie N. Field, 2021. "VOX Spain: The Organisational Challenges of a New Radical Right Party," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(4), pages 240-251.
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