TY - JOUR

T1 - Demonisation of political discourses?

T2 - How mainstream parties talk about the populist radical right

AU - Schwörer, Jakob

AU - Fernández-García, Belén

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2021/7/19

Y1 - 2021/7/19

N2 - Academic research focuses on political communication of populist radical right parties and on their discourses about the political mainstream. Yet, we know less about how the political mainstream talks about radical right populists. Scholars assume a demonisation of populist radical right parties by the mainstream, which portrays the far-right outsiders as Nazis or fascists. This study assesses whether demonising discourses are indeed a common communicative element of Western European mainstream parties by analysing parties’ messages on Twitter in ten Western European countries during election campaigns. The findings indicate that demonising discourses are not as widespread as assumed in the literature but occur exclusively among some centre-left parties. In the article it is argued that historical contexts (experiences with fascist rule) and electoral breakthrough of radical right parties might explain why certain centre-lefts demonise their far-right competitors while others do not.

AB - Academic research focuses on political communication of populist radical right parties and on their discourses about the political mainstream. Yet, we know less about how the political mainstream talks about radical right populists. Scholars assume a demonisation of populist radical right parties by the mainstream, which portrays the far-right outsiders as Nazis or fascists. This study assesses whether demonising discourses are indeed a common communicative element of Western European mainstream parties by analysing parties’ messages on Twitter in ten Western European countries during election campaigns. The findings indicate that demonising discourses are not as widespread as assumed in the literature but occur exclusively among some centre-left parties. In the article it is argued that historical contexts (experiences with fascist rule) and electoral breakthrough of radical right parties might explain why certain centre-lefts demonise their far-right competitors while others do not.

KW - Politics

KW - content analysis

KW - populism

KW - radical right

KW - mainstream parties

KW - demonisation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090155987&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/01402382.2020.1812907

DO - 10.1080/01402382.2020.1812907

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 44

SP - 1401

EP - 1424

JO - West European Politics

JF - West European Politics

SN - 0140-2382

IS - 7

ER -