“Defend your right!” How the populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms to discursively construct identities

2021 ◽  
pp. 2336825X2110529
Author(s):  
Alexander Alekseev

The article explores how the European populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms in its political discourse. By relying on the findings of the existing research and applying the discourse-historical approach to electoral speeches by Marine Le Pen and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leaders of two very dissimilar EU PRR parties, the Rassemblement National and the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, the article abductively develops a functional typology of references to rights and freedoms commonly used in discourses of European PRR parties: it suggests that PRR discourses in Europe feature references to the right to sovereignty, citizens’ rights, social rights, and economic rights. Such references are used as a coherent discursive strategy to construct social actors following the PRR ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. As the PRR identifies itself with the people, defined along nativist and populist lines, rights are always attributed to it. The PRR represents itself as the defender of the people and its rights, while the elites and the aliens are predicated to threaten the people and its rights. References to rights in PRR discourses intrinsically link the individual with the collective, which allows to construct and promote a populist model of ethnic democracy.

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-156
Author(s):  
Ivan Fomin ◽  
◽  
Alexander Alexeev

The article explores how the EU populist radical right in opposition to its national governments uses the concept of rights and freedoms when constructing identities. The research is based on a discourse analysis of speeches given by the leader of the French Rassemblement National Marine Le Pen in the run-up to the 2019 European parliamentary elections. The analysis of discursive strategies employed in these texts allows to empirically demonstrate and elaborate some of the existing theories on key ideological and discursive features of the populist radical right and its positions on rights and freedoms. It also shows, however, that these models need to be reviewed or altered in a number of aspects. The research corresponds to the existing models as it shows the opposition the Self vs. the Other to be one of the central elements in the populist radical right discourse. For instance, when speaking about rights and freedoms, Marine Le Pen constructs the identity of the French people and European peoples by opposing them to the negative Other along two axes: vertically – by constructing a populist opposition to the elites – and horizontally – by constructing a nativist opposition to alien identities. The people is predicated to possess various rights, the Rassemblement National is represented as the defender of these rights, while the elites and the aliens are depicted as a threat to these rights. Yet, these oppositions are not always clearly articulated with numerous ‘grey zones’ systematically constructed: the research demonstrates that the depiction of some actors in a positive or negative way depends on context. The European identity constructed by the populist radical right is also ambivalent: it is not completely rejected although the ongoing European integration project – the EU – is reproached for infringing rights and freedoms. In general, the analysis allows to conclude that the populist radical right in the EU should be regarded as an active contester in the ongoing interpretive struggle over the concept of rights and freedoms rather than its enemy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-152
Author(s):  
Busiso Helard Moyo ◽  
Anne Marie Thompson Thow

Despite South Africa’s celebrated constitutional commitments that have expanded and deepened South Africa’s commitment to realise socio-economic rights, limited progress in implementing right to food policies stands to compromise the country’s developmental path. If not a deliberate policy choice, the persistence of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms is a deep policy failure.  Food system transformation in South Africa requires addressing wider issues of who controls the food supply, thus influencing the food chain and the food choices of the individual and communities. This paper examines three global rights-based paradigms – ‘food justice’, ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ – that inform activism on the right to food globally and their relevance to food system change in South Africa; for both fulfilling the right to food and addressing all forms of malnutrition. We conclude that the emerging concept of food sovereignty has important yet largely unexplored possibilities for democratically managing food systems for better health outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (01) ◽  
pp. 80-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosie Campbell ◽  
Silvia Erzeel

This contribution to the Special Issue on Gender and Conservatism uses expert and election surveys to explore the extent to which the feminist or traditional gender ideology of parties of the right relates to their economic and liberal/authoritarian ideology. We show that although parties of the left generally espouse more feminist ideologies than parties of the right, there are a significant number of rightist parties in Western Europe that combine laissez-faire economic values with liberal feminist ideals. That said, there is more homogeneity among parties of the populist radical right than rightist parties more generally. We find that despite some variation in their gender ideology, parties of the populist radical right overwhelmingly—with the exception of one party in the Netherlands—continue to adopt traditional or antifeminist gender ideologies. In terms of attracting women voters, we find that rightist parties who adopt a feminist gender ideology are able to attract more women voters than other parties of the right. We detect several examples of center-right parties that include feminist elements in their gender ideologies and are able to win over larger proportions of women voters than rightist parties that fail to adopt feminist positions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 222-226
Author(s):  
K.C. Kavipriya

Economic Development of a country depends upon the individual development; Creation of more Employment opportunities is the right way to strengthen our Economy. By way of strengthening Small scale units, ultimately more people will get Employment. More over Small scale Industries required less amount of Capital. These are the main reasons to start the scheme MUDRA. The scheme MUDRA was launched in the year 2015 by Government of India. In India most of the people are depending upon small scale businesses as their source of livelihood. Most of the individuals depend on un-organised sectors for loans and other credit facilities which have high rate of interest along with unbearable terms and conditions. Ultimately it will lead these poor people to fall in debts. This paper is an attempt to educate the readers about MUDRA Yojana.


1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Wimmer

The study begins with a critical examination of two opposing, theories of nationalism. Next, the relationship between the State and nationalism in the form of the nation state is seen as a process of social formation during which a compromise is established between public and private elites, and the people: loyalty is exchanged for the right to participate in social rights. In the third part, the author considers the future of a number of Southern states in relation to the fundamentals of nation formation.


Author(s):  
William F. Felice

Economic rights refer to the right to property, the right to work, and the right to social security. Social rights are those entitlements necessary for an adequate standard of living, including rights to food, housing, health, and education. Since economic rights have a social basis, and social rights have an economic basis, both classifications are considered of equal importance and interdependent. The intellectual and social dimensions of economic and social rights have evolved from at least four spheres: religion, philosophy, politics, and law. Throughout history, individuals and groups debated and accepted obligations to help the needy and prevent suffering. There were both religious and secular dimensions to these undertakings. Early human rights advocates moreover proclaimed an interdependence between civil and political rights and economic and social rights and criticized those who made too sharp a distinction between them. A central debate over economic and social rights relates to their legal validity. Some scholars argue that by their very nature, economic and social rights are not “justiciable.” Another issue is the link between economic and social rights in meeting basic human needs and the alleviation of global poverty. The right to development is also important in debates on economic and social rights, as it attempts to correct the economic distortions left by the legacy of colonial domination. Perhaps the most promising new approach to economic and social rights is Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, which focuses on what individuals need for adequate functioning.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 438-470
Author(s):  
Alexandra Snipes ◽  
Cas Mudde

AbstractAlthough the populist radical right is generally seen as a particularly masculine and misogynist phenomenon, several of its parties have female leaders. The most prominent is Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Rally (formerly the National Front) and unofficial leader of the European populist radical right. Using insights from intersectionality theory, we posit that Marine Le Pen, as a female populist radical right politician, faces qualitatively different media coverage than both her female and her radical right counterparts. In this study, we analyze her media framing in two French (Le Figaro and Le Monde) and two U.S. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal) newspapers, focusing on the application of gender and populist radical right frames. We find that the “harder” populist radical right frame dominates the “softer” gender frame in all four newspapers, but, paradoxically, the combination of the two frames leads to overall less biased coverage of Marine Le Pen compared with both other female and other populist radical right politicians. In the conclusion, we discuss some of the consequences of the findings for the broader study of female politicians, most notably, theories of intersectionality and the double bind for women in leadership.


Africa ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diedrich Westermann

Opening ParagraphThe following remarks are not addressed to specialists, but to those Europeans and Africans working in Africa who have for professional reasons an interest in getting to know the native better and, if possible, in making this knowledge available to a wider circle. This applies pre-eminently to missionaries. They, more than any other body of men, have an interest in studying the people among whom they work. It is their aim to transform the inner life of the tribe and of the individual. They are co-operating in creating a new religious, moral, and often social order. Only those who know the traditional environment of the native have the opportunity and the right of effecting such a transformation, as they are thus in a position to forge links between the old and the new, and in consequence will make the new ideas develop naturally from the old ways of thought. Old traditions must not be pushed on one side and ignored, on the contrary they should be carefully studied to see if there is not embedded in them something that can be incorporated in the new order, or something that has to be transformed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Kanal Guvaherath ◽  
Eveli Mainatikau ◽  
Ell Casanne

Is it right or entrenched? The people of India have to make India a democratic republic and have freedom, power, and opportunity injustice, society, economy, politics, and religion The fraternity is to be fulfilled in order to achieve equality and the dignity of the individual and the integrity of the country and society. Baba Saheb Ambedkar aptly says that No matter how good a political act is a political law will certainly become bad if the rulers are bad. The constitution can be good if it is good for a political act.  The Indian nation has eight thousand castes. How can the fraternity and equality come into existence if a few people have tendency of superiority with the frenzied religion? It is not possible indifference shown in terms of birth, by the birth and the status quo.


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