The pandemic crisis narrative of populist radical right parties in Spain, Italy and France

The pandemic generated by the global spread of the covid-19 virus is one of the most difficult challenges for the societies of the 21st century. Even consolidated European democracies have proven to be unprepared to deal with such a threat, experiencing significant problems in terms of public health as well as economic and social issues. From a political perspective, however, according to the literature (Boin, Kuipers and 't Hart 2017), crises offer to political actors the possibility to construct narrative frames concerning the description of the threat, its causes and possible solutions that reflect their political identities and strategies. While this is true for all parties, populist parties are the ones who benefit the most. An element of populist communication is precisely the crisis narrative centred on the identification and juxtaposition of victims and those responsible (Moffitt 2013). Starting from these theoretical premises, the paper proposes a comparison of the narrative frames on the pandemic crisis and its economic and social ramifications elaborated by three populist radical right parties in Italy, Spain and France: Salvini's League, Vox and the Rassemblemnt National. Our hypothesis is that the three parties have constructed frames focused on the maximization of the crisis, radicalizing their role as opposition parties and reinforcing the peculiar elements of the right-wing populist communication. In order to test this hypothesis, we propose a qualitative content analysis of institutional and non-institutional speeches delivered by the three parties’ leaders and main representatives.