“Ideology ‘Still’ Matters!”: Comparing and Contrasting the Eurosceptic Discourses of Die Linke and Alternative Für Deutschland in Germany

In contrast to the high expectations that dominated the European landscape on the future of the European integration earlier, the EU has encountered many detrimental challenges such as the economic malaise, the refugee crisis and the Brexit over the last decade. Parallel to, and in direct relation with, these problems, the Union has also been posed another important challenge which is not less important than the others: the striking rise of Eurosceptic populism. Cutting across various political views and ideological approaches, the Eurosceptic populist backlash has mainly marked a serious opposition against the core philosophy, underlying principles and primary policies of the EU in multiple levels. Despite being subject to rising political and academic attention, the framing of the Eurosceptic populist political parties in the media debates and the growing literature seems to be rather problematic. In particular, there exists a general tendency in which populism having Eurosceptic overtones comes to be increasingly equated with rather nationalistic radical right political parties, with reserved space allocated to the differing Eurosceptic views voiced by the radical left parties. Moving from this path, the major argument of this study is that although Eurosceptic populism tends to be mostly depicted as a monolithic bloc in which different political parties and movements are covered regardless of their ideological peculiarities, the ideological belongingness and political premises of the radical right and radical left political parties still exert greater influence on the construction of their divergent discourses in opposing the EU. In this quest, the ‘illusion’ created in the media and the academic literature both by the elaboration of the so-called Eurosceptic populist ‘front’ in an ideologically neutral and politically indifferent fashion and by the neglection of the distinct ideological motivations held by radical left and radical right Eurosceptic parties in putting opposition towards the EU will initially be discussed. Following that, two major consequences that are evaluated to occur as a result of this generated illusion will be issued, namely the neglection of rather equality, social justice and democracy-oriented criticisms directed by the radical left parties towards the EU, and the rising electoral performance and political success of the radical right parties in the national and European elections. Concerned with fulfilling these deficits in the analysis of the Eurosceptic populism for the sake of stressing the overwhelming impact of the ideological affiliations on the constitution of distinct Eurosceptic reservoirs, the Eurosceptic populist discourses of radical left Die Linke and radical right Alternativ für Deutcshland (AfD) in Germany will be compared and contrasted as two central cases. In this regard, the official manifestos prepared by these two ideologically opposite parties for the 2013 federal elections, the 2014 European Parliament elections, and the 2017 federal elections will primarily be focused in order to grasp the essence of their Eurosceptic populist articulations. Through this way, the similarities and differences among the Eurosceptic populist agendas of these two parties will be distinguished so as to locate the ideologically divergent narratives of the AfD and Die Linke in the broader framework of Eurosceptic populism. Keywords: European Union, Euroscepticism, Political Parties, Populism.