Right-Wing Populism and Construction of the 'Other'

Since the 1990s Europe is struggling with representation and identity crisis. Populism and its hollow pledges on identity politics have been added to the scenario recently. Although its roots date back to centuries ago, populism sporadically has come to fore. It is possible to consider the year of 2017 as an impatiently-awaited year when both supranational elections like the election of the President of the EU Parliament and national elections held. These elections respectively included Holland General Elections held in March, and French Presidential elections held in April and May and German Bundestag elections held in September. Led by the Prime Minister Mark Rutte People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy has won the election thus comforting the EU to a certain degree and by leaving behind Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party which is known with its extreme right-wing populist discourse and anti-Islam, anti-migration and anti-EU stance. In addition to that, it has also been a hopeful situation for the EU that Marine Le Pen, the leader of extreme right National Front Party, has been defeated by Emanuel Macron representing the central politics and liberals. However, Germany’s Bundestag elections have been significant in that the Alternative für Deutschland Party, known for its anti-euro, anti-Islam and anti-migration stance and has been regarded as a right-wing populist party, has increased its votes remarkably although the election has been won by CDU and Merkel for the fourth time. Both in the Netherlands and in France, the mentioned parties have already been represented in the parliaments before the last elections. However, in Germany, a right-wing populist party’s winning the 12.6 percent of the votes is notable. Within this context, conducting multimodal discourse analysis, this study aims to interpret the 2017 German Bundestag elections with reference to the AfD’s identity politics with the concepts of populist literature which have been used haphazardly more than ever.