The Dynamics of Journalistic Discourse on Populism and Extremism: Moralistic Stories about Refugees

The article examines the characteristics of extreme populist news discourses and their right-wing policies in the case of xenophobic discussions of refugees and Islam. It analyzes news articles about refugees from two weeklies, Reporter and Demokracija, which are self-described as right-wing-oriented political weeklies, in order to reveal the implementation of their populist policy. This policy is based on authoritarianism, militarism, nativism and ethnic nationalism, the culturalisation of economic policy and on the techniques of arousing disgust and hatred instead of compassion, and it is rearticulated in relation to refugees – Muslim immigrants – who are presented as a threat to “our” freedoms. The article notes that Islamophobia and extreme populist discourses, which are spreading via the news discourse, replace the biological with the cultural, but also refugees with Muslim immigrants, which gives us a new form of cultural racism.
KEY WORDS: refugees, populist news discourse, extremism, nationalism, cultural racism

SUMMARY

This article investigates the characteristics of extreme populism in journalism in the case of xenophobic discussions of refugees and Islam, which is being spread around Slovenia via news discourse. It analyzes 119 news articles about refugees from the weekly Reporter and 79 news articles from the weekly Demokracija, which are both self-described as right-wing-oriented political weeklies, and deconstructs the discursive mechanisms which construct the refugees as Muslim immigrants and as a threat to “our” freedoms. The article suggests that two key points of extreme right discourses, migration and Islam, are united on the topic of refugees, which results in the representing of refugees as “alien” to the host, i.e. “our”, country. The aim of the article is to reveal the implementation of the populist policy in news discourses. This policy is based on authoritarianism, militarism, nativism and ethnic nationalism, the culturalisation of economic policy and on the techniques of arousing disgust and hatred instead of compassion. The article notes that Islamophobia and extreme populist discourses, which are being spread via the news discourse, replace the biological with the cultural, but also refugees with Muslim immigrants, which gives us a new form of cultural racism. This results in the emergence of new ways of articulation of the “us” community – European civilization vs Islam, whereby “us-ness” against Islam immigrants is strengthened in the modern era and becomes the core of nationalist communities. The article shows that media discourse in Reporter and Demokracija is a culturalized political discourse, since it represents the cultural division between national citizens on one side and cosmopolitan cultural elites and Muslim immigrants on the other as the main division in European countries. This is a new rhetoric of exclusion, which is a characteristic of the populist discourses that Reporter and Demokracija reproduce, and of right-wing politics in general. The article concludes that a new hegemonic shift is occurring – ideas which were once dealt with on the extreme right end of the political spectrum are now permeating mainstream discourses, and this explains the rise and the strengthening of extreme populism as a new cultural racism, reproduced in journalism.