‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’: Emergency politics and far right legitimation

Far right parties are prone to engage in ‘politics of fear’: their ideology is populated with references to existential threats and emergencies putting the survival of the Nation in question. Drawing on works on emergency politics, this paper considers how far right parties use a vocabulary of emergency to legitimize their political views and actions. It argues that by relying on notions of ‘emergency', ‘danger’ and ‘crisis,’ far right parties promote the idea that desperate times call for desperate measures, and create the space to present themselves as providential actors holding solutions commensurate to the dangers being faced. Thus, they can counter the view of themselves as ‘extremists’ or ‘radicals’ and instead present themselves as the only actors holding credible solutions to existing (or discursively created) emergencies. The argument is illustrated empirically through the analysis of key speeches produced by Rassemblement National leaders.