scholarly journals Left-wing populism in Western countries. The Phenomenon of J.-L. Mélenchon

Author(s):  
D. V. SHMELEV

The article studies the phenomenon of left populism in Western  Europe. On the example of France, the author examines the specifics  and historical origins of left populism, its ideas and  slogans, electoral technologies, factors of presence on the political  scene. The author focuses on the political activities of Jean-Luc  Mélenchon, his election campaign for the presidential and  parliamentary elections in 2017 in France. The article considers the  key stages of Mélenchon’s political career, the features of his political discourse and program, the creation of the Left front, the conditions for the rise and the specifics of left populism in France.  Among the specific features of French left populism, anti-elitism,  antisystem, egalitarianism and the demand for social justice,  pacifism and criticism of the neoliberal version of globalization are  highlighted. The author believes that the rise of left populism in  France has led to significant changes in the balance of political forces during the presidential and parliamentary campaigns of spring  and summer of 2017, putting it to the forefront of political  struggle. In the light of the evolution of the political situation in  France, the article analyzes Mélenchon’s subsequent activities  related to his position around the debate on the reform of labor  legislation, social protests in autumn 2017 and spring 2018, relations with other left-wing parties and movements, structural  changes within the “La France insoumise”. The article emphasizes the undeniable leadership of the Mélenchon movement  among the far left organizations; it is noted that the preservation of the horizontal structures of “La France insoumise” (social networks,  Autonomous initiatives, activism), media strategy, the specifics of  political discourse and appeal to different layers of the electorate,  participation in social protests allow us to talk about the French left  populism and Mélenchon as the main political rival of President Macron.

2021 ◽  
Vol 273 ◽  
pp. 12138
Author(s):  
Diana Abdurakhmanova ◽  
Ekaterina Redkozubova

Speech manipulation in the pre-election discourse aims to influence the audience in order to increase the number of the electorate and present their political activities in a more favorable way. This article is devoted to the study of ways to achieve this goal using strategies of self-presentation and discrediting. It is known that the political struggle for power at the stage of debate is carried out mainly through a strategy of discrediting. The task of belittling the opponent's status comes to the fore. Such activity involves a set of certain tactics that help to implement it: from the most common tactics of accusation and ridicule to less frequent tactics of exaggeration and unproven undermining of authority. This analysis demonstrates the variety of tactics used by Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the 2020 political debate as part of a discrediting strategy. The result of the study showed that politicians resort more to tactics of open speech influence, which takes place in offhand speech. In addition, the efficiency of the strategy of discrediting in political discourse was revealed.


MaRBLe ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estelle Paquay

Since 2009, the rise of the most important Belgian Francophone left-wing populist party, i.e. the Parti du Travail de Belgique (PTB), has been increasingly seen as a challenge for mainstream parties. Given the lack of research on Belgium within the field of political left-populist discourse, this paper analyses the effect of the growing popularity of the left-populist party on mainstream parties’ discourse. To investigate this issue, a discourse analysis has been conducted following the Modified Spatial Theory which argues that, when triggered, mainstream parties choose between three different strategies (accommodative, dismissive, or adversarial) to respond to the rise of populism. The findings show that, the rise of the PTB has had more effect on the Socialist Party’s discourse, which has accommodated and converged with the PTB on several typically populist issues, while the other two mainstream parties have rather dismissed and tried to discredit the political discourse of the PTB.


Author(s):  
Boris I. Kolonitskii

The article examines the cultural forms of legitimation / delegitimation of authority of the Provisional Government. Particular attention is paid to the personal authority of Alexander Kerensky, including rhetorical (persuasive) devices and visual images which underlay the tactics of praising or condemning him. As the main source, the article uses the newspapers of A.A. Suvorin, namely Malen'kaya gazeta [Little newspaper], Narodnaya gazeta [People’s newspaper], Rus' [Rus], Novaya Rus' [New Rus]. These newspapers are compared with resolutions, letters and diaries, and with publications in other periodicals. The study clarifies some aspects of political isolation of the Provisional Government in the fall of 1917. By this time, the propaganda attack on Kerensky was conducted not only by the Bolsheviks and other left-wing groups but also by the right-wing and conservative publications. The propaganda of the left- and right-wing opponents was significantly different but they had a point of contact: both of them created the image of the “traitor” who was unworthy to remain in power.


Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-211
Author(s):  
Nicola D'Elia

The debate surrounding German Social Democracy during the era of the Second International represents an important chapter in the historiography of post-Second World War Italy. At the same time, it also marks some crucial moments in the political and intellectual life of Republican Italy. This article aims to show the close relationship between the investigation of the past and the ongoing political struggle that has characterised research on this issue. Study of the topic was practically monopolised by left-wing historians, who, in dealing with the history of German Social Democracy, aimed also to direct the political strategy of workers’ parties. Considering the studies appearing after the 1956 crisis and in the mid-1970s, such a goal seems evident. It was only during the 1980s that the research opened itself to different perspectives – no longer influenced by ideological controversies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs Rooduijn ◽  
Tjitske Akkerman

How is populism distributed over the political spectrum? Are right-wing parties more populist than left-wing parties? Based on the analysis of 32 parties in five Western European countries between 1989 and 2008, we show that radical parties on both the left and the right are inclined to employ a populist discourse. This is a striking finding, because populism in Western Europe has typically been associated with the radical right; only some particular radical left parties have been labeled populist as well. This article suggests that the contemporary radical left in Western Europe is generally populist. Our explanation is that many contemporary radical left parties are not traditionally communist or socialist (anymore). They do not focus on the ‘proletariat’, but glorify a more general category: the ‘good people’. Moreover, they do not reject the system of liberal democracy as such, but only criticize the political and/or economic elites within that system.


Author(s):  
Dan Schiller

This chapter examines some of the larger forces that propelled digital capitalism into what was evidently a fraught future. It first considers how the historical movement of the political economy is shaped both within and beyond a top-down, state-oriented geopolitics before discussing how the onset of the digital depression brought changes to the interstate system, indicative of altering political–economic relations. It then describes attempts by numerous states to multilateralize control of U.S.-centric internet in relation to structural changes in the interstate system and to competing efforts to regenerate the political economy in ways that might capture an outsized share of overall profits for specific units of capital and particular fractions of the capitalist class. It also explains the concept of accumulation by dispossession and concludes with suggestions for resolving the digital depression on terms favorable to capital.


Author(s):  
Olena Ilienko ◽  
Liudmyla Shumeiko

The rapid spread of Internet communication nowadays has changed the conditions under which political communication takes place, although its purpose remains the same – influence for the sake of power. The article analyzes and summarizes the directions and trends in the study of political discourse, which is the context of political utterance, utterance itself and its perception. It is noted that the Internet has proved to be a new effective way of informing, persuading, arguing and manipulating the mass consciousness, accelerating the process of providing information and changing its format, including for manipulative purposes. It is revealed that the Internet has formed new genres and forms of political communication, providing an opportunity to get feedback from the political message and creating the appearance of direct communication between politicians and the public. The study of political discourse by researchers today is multi-vector: in a purely linguistic direction (the language of political statements); in linguistic and pragmatic direction (how the functions of political discourse are realized); anthropocentric (political personality); sociolinguistic (society’s reaction to the political activities of the subjects) and others. As the field of politics is constantly changing, responding to global, socio-political, economic circumstances, its analysis, including by linguists, provides and will always provide new material for further research.


Author(s):  
Dmitriy V. Shapochkin

Political discourse is currently the subject of various interdisciplinary studies involving a lot of scientific approaches to its description. This article highlights an enormous potential of the use of color in the political discourse. On the one hand, the color involves the emotional sphere, while, on the other, it can lead to instant associations with a certain phenomenon of reality. Politicians actively use the color not only as a distinguishing sign that allows them to identify parties, movements, ethnic groups, etc. with the establishment or the denial of mutual contacts, but also as an independent symbol, which has tremendous possibilities for regulating and organizing of social political processes. Functioning as a symbol of political forces, color greatly simplifies the perception of the political situation. However, the differentiation of political forces is not its only function. Evaluation is of the great importance, i. e. the consolidation of the assessment for a specific phenomenon, which is achieved by many repetitions in the same context. Because of the brightness of color associations, the color designation of political parties is a powerful tool in the political struggle. At the same time, the use of color symbols in the political discourse reveals national-specific features in the struggle for power. Thus, there is a need to study the functioning of color designations in the national political discourses. In this article, the author pays special attention to the study of the color in the German political discourse of the leading political figures of Germany, such as Angela Merkel (CDU), Katya Kipping (Die Linke) and Christian Lindner (FDP).


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020/2 ◽  
pp. 85-111
Author(s):  
Vytautas Petronis

RADICAL RUSSIAN MONARCHIST ORGANISATIONS AND THEIR ACTIVITIES IN VILNIUS IN 1906–1914 The article analyses the branches of imperial radical political parties that operated in Vilnius between 1906 and 1914, their history, members, ideology and activities. The research is divided into two periods of activity, 1906 to 1912, and 1912 to 1914. The first period saw the formation of branches of political parties, their political activities, and differentiation; whereas in the second period, after the 1912 elections to the Fourth Duma, radical monarchists withdrew from the political arena, and focused mostly on social, economic and religious spheres of urban life. The nucleus of the political movement was formed by the Orthodox clergy, teachers in public and private schools, junior civil servants, reservists, and railway workers. An important role when establishing branches of radical monarchist movements was played by certain members of the Old Believer community. With no support in the city, which was dominated by a foreign-born infidel population, they tried to penetrate the local Russian community and promote the old, monarchist, traditionalist and patriarchal dogmas declared in the ideologeme they advocated: ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism’. When participating in the political struggle for a place in local dumas, radical monarchists in Vilnius not only distanced themselves from their more liberal counterparts, the nationalists, but also became involved in internal conflicts. The end of the 1905 revolution, the turn towards more secular Russian nationalism by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, and disagreements between local monarchists, resulted in the torpidity of monarchism on the eve of the First World War.


Author(s):  
Emilia Smolak Lozano ◽  
Atsuho Nakayama

Twitter has become a powerful tool of political communication, that now plays a significant role during elections, especially in countries such as Spain, where use of digital media is extended widely throughout society. Digital democracy is based to a significant extent on the quality of public discourse and persuasion implemented in the digital messages contained in tweets. Text mining methods applied to tweets during the 2019 European elections made it possible to examine content, frequently used keywords and expressions, sentiment and tone of the political discourse of the main Spanish political parties. The objective of the analysis is to determine the scope and thematic focus of the political discourse on Twitter and make an inter-party comparison. The results reveal that Spanish politics were a much bigger focus than the European perspective and the social outlook pursued by the left wing turned out to be more visible than other proposals. Fragmentised discourse in the case of the populist parties focused on concrete problems to be resolved, whereas the main approach of Twitter politics was the fight against right-wing rivals. It is possible to conclude rather low maturity in terms of democratic public discourse with the high persuasive components integrated within tweets and a self-appraising attitude.


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