Populist conspiratorial discourses in four radical right parties

Recent academic research has suggested an association between the belief in conspiracy theories and populism or radical political ideologies (Bergmann, 2018; Van Prooijen, 2018). This paper aims to elaborate on this, emphasizing the conceptual distinctiveness of radical right-wing populism and conspiracy theories while investigating and clarifying their discursive interconnection through the concept of populist conspiratorial discourse. After having outlined four broadly recognized radical right parties taken as case studies (Alduy, 2022; Forti, 2022; Ivaldi, 2014), their different history and contexts will be stressed since they’ll become essential for the following empirical analysis. This latter will explore to what extent how and why those parties employ populist conspiratorial discourses in their Facebook communication, with a special focus on the framing of the enemies. The study will be conducted through MAXQDA, a software that analyzes coded sentences in texts both qualitatively and quantitatively. As it will be shown, differences and variations between cases and contexts will be highlighted.