We Talk about the “Others” and You Listen Closely

Special Issue: Mapping the Discursive Opportunities for Radical-Right Populist Politics across Eastern Europe

“…The present special issue contains six articles that map out these developments across Eastern Europe, covering both individual country cases such as Romania (Soare and Tufiș 2018), Slovenia (Pajnik 2018), Estonia (Kasekamp, Madisson, and Wierenga 2018), Slovakia (Kluknavská and Hruška 2018), and Poland (Lipiński and Stępińska 2018), as well as comparing two neighboring countries in which radical-right populism registered dramatically different trajectories, namely Hungary and Romania (Szabó, Norocel, and Bene 2018). These articles also take different methodological approaches to examine favorable or disadvantageous discursive conditions for radical-right populist politics.…”

“…These articles also take different methodological approaches to examine favorable or disadvantageous discursive conditions for radical-right populist politics. They employ both established and novel means to study radicalization, such as thematic social media analysis (Kasekamp, Madisson, and Wierenga 2018), framing analysis (Kluknavská and Hruška 2018), qualitative content analysis (Soare and Tufiș 2018), mixed-methods (Lipiński and Stępińska 2018), and social network analysis (Szabó, Norocel, and Bene 2018).…”

“…In turn, the fifth article examines the social media political communication of a radical-right populist party that developed from a previously marginalized extreme-right movement into a successful parliamentary party in Slovakia DISCURSIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR RADICAL-RIGHT POLITICS (Kluknavská and Hruška 2018). Focusing on enemyconstruction on Facebook as a specific tool for political communication, Alena Kluknavská and Matej Hruška examine how Kotleba-People's Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) employed a nativist and populist framing strategy that is characteristic of a highly antagonistic politics toward minorities and elites.…”

Framing “The Gypsy Problem”: Populist Electoral Use of Romaphobia in Italy (2014–2019)

“…Although the data stem from the Italian case, the results of this study advances the understanding of the scapegoating of Roma in political discourse (Kóczé 2018;Loveland and Popescu 2016) and how it connects with right wing populist communication (Creţan and O'Brien 2019;Kluknavská and Hruška 2019). This makes the research interesting for all who are concerned with the relationship between populism, xenophobia, ethnic discrimination and racism and, in particular, with the role exerted by symbolic élites in the production and reproduction of anti-Roma discourse.…”

“…Most of these works, while illuminating on the use of Romaphobia in political discourse, do not specifically focus on right wing populist movements. On the other side, despite the extensive literature on how right wing populist movements have succeeded in mobilizing and focusing popular resentments towards immigrants (Poynting and Briskman 2020;Grande et al 2018;Meyer and Rosenberger 2015, amongst many others), very few studies have specifically focused on the use of Romaphobia by far right-wing populists (Stewart 2012) and most of them focus on Eastern European countries (Creţan and O'Brien 2019;Kluknavská and Hruška 2019).…”