Secularism and the Construction of Religious Contra-Identities in European Far-Right Discourse

In the evening of 22 November 2023 the exit poll of the Dutch parliamentary elections was published: far-right politician Geert Wilders with his Party for Freedom (PVV) became the largest political party by far with 35 seats. It came as a shock, not only to the leaders of the mainstream political parties who had lost significantly, but also to Muslims who worried that a right-wing government predominated by Wilders would lead to their exclusion from Dutch society. After all, Wilders has been notorious for his harsh anti-Islam rhetoric and his anti-immigration stance during the last twenty years in Dutch parliament. However, in the run-up to the 2023 elections, Wilders suddenly moderated his tone, expressing his wish to become prime minister of all Dutch people, regardless of their religion or background. After the disclosure of his victory, Wilders once again stressed that he would not push for anti-Islam measures, such as a ban on the Qur’an and a shutdown of Islamic schools. This has led to the discussion whether Wilders’ anti-Islam rhetoric has been genuine or merely to entertain his electorate. This discussion taps into the academic debate about the relationship between the far right and religion; to what extent is religion merely instrumentalized or does it play a substantial role in constructing far-right ideologies? And why do Wilders and other European far-right leaders use religious identities in their political rhetoric, despite their highly secularized contexts, such as the Netherlands, France and Sweden? This paper investigates the relationship between secularism and the construction of so-called ‘religious contra-identities’: two religious identities that are emphatically juxtaposed and that are perceived to be mutually exclusive. Analyzing the data of more than 3000 videos of the social media platform TikTok, collected between April and August 2023, this paper demonstrates how the identity of ‘The Christian Europe’ is constructed in opposition to the identity of ‘The Muslim Other’ in the anti-immigration rhetoric of the European far right. It asks the question: ‘Why do religious contra-identities occupy such a prominent place in a secular context and to what extent does secularism contribute to the intolerance of Muslims? Based on the work of Karl Polanyi, Craig Calhoun, Charles Taylor and Michael Sandel, this paper argues that the construction of religious contra-identities is the result of accelerating change and increasing complexity of European societies due to processes of secularization, globalization and individualization. It concludes that these processes, together with the speed of change, have led to feelings of anxiety, insecurity and loss of control, resulting in the vote for the far-right as an emergency break, with Christian religion as its identifying marker to exclude those who do not belong to secular, though culturally Christian, Europe: Muslims.