Populists as victims in power: constructing oppression to suppress

When populists are in opposition they claim to be speaking on behalf of majorities oppressed by elites and minorities. But what happens when populists accede to power and become the ruling elite that represents the majority? This paper seeks to shed light on discursive strategies of populists in power, while exploring the single case study of Poland under two majority governments of the United Right coalition, led by right-wing populist Law and Justice (2015-2023). It argues that populists in power continue with the performance of radical oppression and victimhood very much as if they were in opposition. Accordingly, instrumentalization of oppression aims at suppression of all contestation. In fact, the more the populists in power dominate, the more they claim to be oppressed and persecuted, while legitimating their claims to unchecked power. In this sense, performing a victim constitutes a strategy towards authoritarian rule that allows to justify the dismantling of all checks and balances. In the case of Poland’s right-wing populists this is illustrated with discursive constructs of persecuted Catholics, or ‘mainstream media’ and ‘mainstream elites’ that supposedly continued to dominate despite populists’ full power grab, utter disrespect for the division of power and media capture. Finally, when power grab makes it more difficult to justify internal oppression, the claim of external oppression is increasingly being exploited. In the case of Poland, populists in power constructed themselves as oppressed victims of supranational European institutions, whose internal legitimacy as external providers of checks and balances they sought to dismantle.