Building the Wall – Narratives of Exclusionary Identity in Right-Wing Populism

The political and economic crisis Hungary was experiencing since 2006 has contributed to Orban’s right-wing populist discourse that helped him return to power and build his illiberal system. This paper argues that Orban discursively constructs the image of crisis in order to justify his system. This justification rests on identity fears served by the discursive processes of othering that delineate both ‘us’ and ‘others’, who are to be blamed for the crisis(es) and are therefore ‘enemies’. This Manichean world calls for majoritarian and often authoritarian policies and practices to defend against the threats. The paper traces the ongoing creation and maintenance of this right-wing populist narrative of crisis that becomes more and more nationalist in its construction of ‘the people’ using a systematic content and frame analysis of the official statements and speeches of the prime minister. Demarcation lines between ‘us’ and ‘others’ are constantly fluctuating to address different fears induced by the different threats the discourse identifies. As such, Orban used an economic grievance based populism in 2010that divided between the suffering people and the past elite to be blamed for the near-bankruptcy. At the same time, class is mobilized, more specifically the middle class is signaled out as beholder of ‘national interest’ at the expense of the poor. Simultaneously, international capital and organizations such as IMF are identified as enemies of national interest. By 2014, political discourse focuses on internal enemies – understood as liberals, human right activists or NGOs that are accused of being agents betraying the nation. Similarly, constructing an alternative of the ‘deep state’ narrative, philanthropist George Soros is accused of running a network of NGOs and international organizations to undermine Hungary. The 2015 refugee crisis provides more solid ground for further demarcations – the other has become identified as the migrant. In the discursive construction of the ‘self’, ethnic and linguistic criteria for belonging to ‘the people’ become more significant to signal the cultural distance from ‘the other’, while Christianity is put above the religion of the other, Islam. This new conception of identity mobilizes against not only migrants but the collapse of traditional national values as well as the liberal rationalism embodied by EU and its refugee quota system. Standing up for conservative norms and religious values nevertheless repoliticizes gender and sexual identities that are dismissed in favor of pro-natalist preferences. This shows how the campaigns of exclusionary politics in fact appeal to a more and more narrowly defined public thus building the walls around the community rejecting all those who do not belong to the ethnic nation or Christianity, or refuse to vow fidelity to the will of majority.