RSSReview: Analysing Fascist Discourse (Wodak & Richardson eds)
Oct 12
EDITOR: Ruth Wodak
EDITOR: John E. Richardson
TITLE: Analysing Fascist Discourse
SUBTITLE: European Fascism in Talk and Text
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Rubén Moralejo, Universidade de Vigo
SUMMARY
This volume, edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson, contains a series of
studies which shed light on the continuities and discontinuities of European
fascist discourse. Within the context of European politics, extreme right-wing
populism is (re)presented as an alternative to the political, social and
economic impasse. It seems necessary, from a discourse-analytical perspective,
to critically approach their talk and text in order to determine whether a
fascist “ideological core” (5) still constitutes such contemporary political
practices and by which means the concrete historical conditions mediate a
process of discursive recontextualisation.
Wodak and Richardson set up the main goals as well as the general theoretical
and critical point of departure of the volume in “European Fascism in Talk and
Text — Introduction”. One of the first questions they ask has to do with the
difficulty in reaching an agreement regarding a definition of fascism. Despite
the apparent consensus among historians — Griffin’s definition as
“palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism” (1998:13) is considered the most
accurate and encompassing — a brief look into the literature shows that a
critical, context-sensitive approach constitutes a more appropriate research
strategy. One of the functions of (Critical) Discourse Studies is to situate a
particular text (or talk) in dialectical relation to other texts and other
social phenomena; that is, to contextualise it. However, for this process of
reinterpretation to function critically, its focus cannot be reduced to
synchronic, isolated, concrete social facts. On the contrary: one of the main
epistemological assumptions of the authors is that processes of social
transformation are in part processes of discursive transformation. They can be
analysed in terms of chains of events which are usually involved in a struggle
for social hegemony. Thus, the only way to give account of such changes is by
adopting a historical-diachronic perspective that paves the way for conducting
a longitudinal, comparative study that considers intertextuality and
interdiscursivity as one of the main loci of such struggle.
In the second chapter, “Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based
Authoritarian Populism: Neoliberalism, Identity and Exclusion after the
Crisis”, Daniel Woodley argues that when revisionist historiography considers
fascism as a “totalitarian religion” (17) there is no space left for
envisioning the reciprocal relationship between right-wing populism and
neoliberalism. This misleading characterisation is founded on an idealised
notion of ideology which considers it a separate, content-based set of
beliefs, arguments and ideas that exist apart from the material conditions
that in part determine the social reality of fascist discourse. Woodley’s aim
consists of distancing himself from this academic obfuscation by examining the
precise social function of extreme right-wing populism in the context of the
current global socialisation of capitalist production as well as its inherent
class antagonism. The definition of fascism provided by the author considers
its capitalist-rooted instrumentality, in terms of how both the political and
the corporate elites merge in the form of a dictatorship appealing to
“fetishized identity-driven consumption” (23). These two apparently distinct
positions, neoliberalism and neoconservatism, operate reciprocally; they are
both counterparts, political commodities that collaborate with each other in
constituting and securing the effective functioning of capitalist ideology.
In “Italian Post-war Neo-Fascism: Three Paths, One Mission?” (chapter 3),
Tamir Bar-On focuses on the rise of three neo-fascist — or “revolutionary
right-wing” (43) — strategies in post-war Italy: the creation or adoption of
the institutional form of the party (parliamentary neo-fascism); organising
and engaging in political practices outside the scope of institutionalised
politics (extra-parliamentary neo-fascism); and the most recent “metapolitical
neo-fascism” (45), which withdraws from practices directed at gaining
immediate access to power in favour of a more cultural, theoretical approach.
Such strategies are not mutually exclusive: they complement each other. They
find their unifying principle in undertaking the eradication of liberal
democracy and multiculturalism. Hence, it is in this sense of radical
transformation where Bar-On identifies the revolutionary character of fascism.
A further line of reasoning for the latter is provided by the author when he
mentions the increased Europeanism present in contemporary fascist discourses,
certifying the trans-national character of their future prospects. It is
mainly via the parliamentary and the metapolitical paths that fascism
(re)organised itself in Italy after the War; the result of a tactical
displacement from the risky (and socially repudiated) directness of the
violent revolt to the legitimising frameworks of liberal democracy and the
European intelligentsia.
In chapter 4, “The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany and
Popular Opinion — Lessons for Today” Andreas Musolff assesses the extent to
which the ‘parasite’ metaphor underlying Nazi anti-Semitic discourse impelled
identification or acknowledgment within German popular discourse. The author
embraces the interdisciplinary scope provided by Discourse-oriented Metaphor
Analysis, which encompasses Cognitive Metaphor Analysis, Critical Discourse
Analysis and Discourse History. Metaphors call forth narrative and
argumentative scenarios by means of which certain entities are signalled as
unmarked, whereas others receive particular “socioethical evaluations” (58).
These may, according to historical and discursive contexts, crystallise and
function as action-guiding ‘tenets’. In the case of the ‘parasite’ metaphor, a
schema of infection-crisis-therapy is brought about, yet transposed to Nazi
anti-Semitic imagery: the Jewish race is portrayed as the enemy parasitizing
the German body, the cause of the ‘illness’; as a precondition to the healing
process, the parasite has to be annihilated. Musolff shows how the use of this
metaphor was central to Nazi discourse from the very first moments of the
Third Reich. In fact, the ‘Jew-parasite’ core of the metaphor has survived
through the years. However, he also highlights the presence of discontinuities
concerning the therapy-through-parasite-annihilation scenario, which has been
subjected to variation depending not only on changes in the sociopolitical
context but also in relation to the degree of acceptability granted by the
public.
According to Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak (“‘Calculated ambivalence’ and
Holocaust Denial in Austria”), since the end of World War II, Austria has
undergone a process of identity re-formation that has been characterised by
the obfuscation of its involvement in the genocide against the Jews. This
process has been expressed in Postwar Austrian legislation through the
approval of the Verbotsgesetz (the prohibition law). Using a
Discourse-Historical Approach, the authors inquire into the controversy around
a series of public interventions made by two Austrian right-wing politicians
from the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria), John
Gudenus and Barbara Rosenkranz. Their denial of the Holocaust comprises
“strategies of positive self- and negative other- presentation” and
“strategies of justification and legitimation” (78). The authors focus on
three discursive strategies: referential, predicational, and justificatory
strategies. One of the conclusions they draw refers to the notion of
calculated ambivalence, a dispositive intended to convey a twofold meaning to
different audiences by means of the same utterance. The calculated ambivalence
evidenced in the discourse of Gudenus and Rosenkranz is strategically
construed to avoid the transgression of the Verbotsgesetz — and thus avoid
legal punishment — and to effectively transgress it by means of justifying
and reproducing, although in an ‘encrypted’, ambivalent manner, the denial of
the Holocaust.
In “German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right”, by Claudia
Posch, Maria Stopfner and Manfred Kienpointner, the search for an
all-encompassing definition of fascism is raised again. They claim that the
available, most widely accepted definitions may come in handy when trying to
categorise empirical data as manifestations of fascist thought and propaganda.
They give an overview of German-speaking countries’ history of extreme
right-wing parties, and collect a corpus of texts recently broadcast in
different media. This diachronic-historical contextualisation aids in
identifying significant continuities or discontinuities among the discourses
analysed. Posch, Stopfner and Kienpointner embrace a multifaceted theoretical
framework: they combine Habermas’ Theory of Argumentation, New Rhetoric,
Critical Discourse Analysis and Pragma-Dialectics. They attend to significant
instances of fascist persuasive discourse and the strategic devices they
comprise. Their analysis points to three distinct strategies of persuasion
that have developed within fascist discourse in light of the context of legal
and political conditions that constrain its more transparent manifestations:
the strategic use of indirectness; of metaphor; and of argument schemes that
may revolve around a causal fallacy. In the conclusion, the authors appeal to
a broadening of the scope of the investigation as well as the necessity to
build a more representative corpus.
Derrin Pinto, in “Education and Etiquette: Behaviour Formation in Fascist
Spain”, describes the historical context of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain as
a regime that put ideological investment in the domain of education and the
instilling of the notion of etiquette. This concept was eventually granted
the status of a curricular component, and served the regime as a means to
produce and maintain a particular social configuration. Pinto relies on a
corpus of 33 Spanish textbooks published during the period, related to the
teaching of manners and politeness. His analysis focuses on two main features:
the way ideology is embodied and constructed in terms of its particular
contents, and the concrete discursive devices intended for legitimation and
control. He contends that the texts evidence an ideology depicting a
predilection for National Catholicism (values), high society and an urban,
patriarchal way-of-life (membership), and an absolute respect for authority
(activities and norms) based upon the realisation of personal and social
objectives (goals). Pinto’s analysis shows how the expressions and mechanisms
of persuasive discourse functioned as an ideological tool for legitimation, as
in the case of the recurrent use of the deontic modality to communicate a
sense of duty and obligation. He also explores the continuities and
discontinuities of this ideology regarding contemporary Spanish textbooks.
Cristina Marinho and Michael Billig’s “The CDS-PP and the Portuguese
Parliament’s Annual Celebration of the 1974 Revolution: Ambivalence and
Avoidance in the Construction of the Fascist Past” brings into focus the
insuperable distance evidenced in the simultaneous articulation in discourse
of the rhetorical surface and the ideological depth — calculated ambivalence
that sustains a democratic façade while simultaneously addressing to the ‘old’
fascist ideological core. Through an analysis of parliamentary speeches of the
Portuguese Centro Democrático e Social Partido Popular (Social and Democratic
Centre Popular Party) which were given at annual commemorations of the 1974
Revolução dos Cravos, they show how this discursive duplicity manifests in a
context-dependent fashion and, as they conclude, how the
parliamentary-annual-celebration setting itself is a precondition for such
ambivalence to function effectively.
The next chapter (“Continuities of Fascist Discourses, Discontinuities of
Extreme-Right Political Actors?: Overt and Covert Anti-Semitism in the
Contemporary French Radical Right”) aims at dismantling some implications of
the discontinuity theory: the diachronically-evidenced idea that, given the
transformation within French political discourses with regard to the
non-acceptability of anti-Semitism, extreme-right discourses have withdrawn
from signalling the Jew as the ultimate antagonist, favouring other new
“ethnic tensions” (163). Brigitte Beauzamy critically analyses contemporary
radical-right anti-Semitic discourses, such as those of Le Pen’s party, Front
National, and the Nouvelle Droite, as well as the discourse of Kemi Seba, a
French Afrocentric activist. She contends that there is a maintenance of the
‘old’ fascist nucleus regarding anti-Semitism, of which one significant
instance can be found in the discourse of Kemi Seba. This discursive
continuity leads, according to Beauzamy, to the reaffirmation of the
traditional anti-Semitic ideology.
John E. Richardson’s chapter “Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse:
The Case of COMBAT and the British National Party (1960-1967)” deals with old
and contemporary British fascism. The author proposes a framework informed by
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach, especially
regarding the latter’s conceptualisation of context as comprising four
interconnected levels, which is crucial for the task of exposing the
continuities and discontinuities of certain semiotic entities within
discourse. Richardson focuses on the British National Party’s (BNP)
anti-Semitic discourse. After offering a diachronic outline of the main
strategies that can be found in British fascist discourse, Richardson
concludes that, despite having abandoned univocal allusions to anti-Semitism,
the discourse of the BNP still retains the traditional British fascist
ideological core. The difference is that contemporary discourses rely on a
recontextualisation that avoids any explicit reference to ‘old’ fascism
(mostly due to legal constraint and a self-interest for gaining adepts), on
the one hand, and rehabilitates the same traditional fascism, on the other.
“Variations on a Theme: The Jewish ‘Other’ in Old and New Antisemitic Media
Discourses in Hungary in the 1940s and in 2011,” by András Kovács and Anna
Szilágyi, considers the controversy that sprouted as a consequence of the
appearance of extreme-right organisations in European post-Communist
countries. Specifically, the authors focus on Hungarian media discourses.
Determining whether these new political forces consist of just another
variation of generic fascism (continuity) or constitute a singular, genuine
political movement in its own right (discontinuity) has proved unsatisfactory.
One of the possible continuities is the professed anti-Semitism of the current
Hungarian extreme right. This connection is confirmed in their analysis, which
distinguishes the main patterns of anti-Semitic discourses displayed in two
Hungarian newspapers published during the 1940s. They look for similar
discursive patterns in the case of two Hungarian news portals dating from
2011. To support their claim that ‘old’ fascist patterns continue to appear in
the discourses of current extreme-right media, they examine discursive
strategies of othering that appear to coincide in both cases: Jews are
referred to as the relevant other, and the stereotypes employed in depicting
the other along with the argumentation schemes at work — such as the
“victim-victimiser reversal” (209) — are recurrent in both historical
moments. However, Kovács and Szilágyi also point out some significant
differences. For example, the Jewish ‘menace’ is now regarded not so much as
being confined to the Hungarian borders as constituting a global threat.
Finally, the authors also discuss the function of anti-Semitic discourse:
whereas it served traditional fascism as a compelling means for mass
mobilisation, nowadays it works as a medium to foster group identity.
“The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda” deals with the
Ukrainian case. Per Anders Rudling studies the history of far-right political
movements in the country, attending not only to the ideological, political
aspects evidenced in their behaviour but also to the conditions that cleared
the way for their rise and propagation. He argues that the current Ukrainian
situation is the result of a strategy of rehabilitation of far-right ideology.
This development was marked by the neo-fascist instrumentation of history: the
glorification of certain, salient historical characters or events for both
legitimating its existence and mobilising its audience. Such a strategy was
not so much enacted within the political sphere but primarily fulfilled by the
far-right Ukrainian intelligentsia, i.e. through the work of revisionist
historians who have constructed and theorised a national cosmology that relies
on the self-victimisation of Ukrainian fascists.
In “New Times, Old Ideologies? Recontextualisations of Radical Right Thought
in Post-Communist Romania,” Irina Diana Mădroane analyses the multiple layers
of meaning implied in contemporary, extreme-right Romanian discourses.
Mădroane contends that, given the on-going process of fascist rehabilitation
in Romania, these meanings are intentionally administered as part of the
process. The author discusses the post-Communist context and the appearance of
the New Right as the main representative of the increasing radical right
manifestations in the country. This political movement is mainly informed by
the Legionary doctrine. Mădroane’s framework comprises Critical Discourse
Analysis and the Discourse Historical Approach, and she focuses on the ways in
which intertextuality and interdiscursivity may serve to evidence a process of
discursive recontextualisation. An analysis of a series of texts appearing on
the New Right’s website shows that the process of identity reshaping is
sustained by three discursively-mediated strategies: an ultra-nationalist
rhetoric indebted to the Legionary mythology, discursive strategies of
exclusion and rejection of the threatening Others, and strategies of
transformation, which consist in the self-characterisation of the movement in
messianic terms.
In the next section, Anton Shekhovtsov (“European Far-Right Music and Its
Enemy”) considers the extreme right music scene. He specifically looks into
the construction of the Enemy and the discursive resources mobilised to that
end within the lyrics of various White Power songs. Shekhovtsov claims that
the sources of inspiration of White Power music coincide with those of some
extreme right political movements. For example, the Jew is usually portrayed
as the pivotal element between the Other and the System. The study evidences
the narrow relationship between White Power music and its political
counterpart, arguing that far-right music should not be regarded as a ‘soft’
manifestation of extreme right ideology. On the contrary, its role as an
inherent element of the ultra-nationalist political expression must not be
underestimated.
The concluding chapter, “The Branding of European Nationalism: Perpetuation
and Novelty in Racist Symbolism”, is by Mark McGlashan. Embracing a Discourse
Historical Approach, he considers the significant rhetorical features that can
be found in the symbolic practices of several political parties. The notion of
political branding is foregrounded as a multimodal, analytic tool that may be
helpful in identifying the “symbolic realisations of racism” (299) within the
logos of European nationalist parties. McGlashan presents several case studies
from different national contexts. He points to the continuities between
extreme-right discourses and the visual symbolism involved in the branding
strategies of political organisations. Not only do the logos point to similar
referents, but they are also strategically constructed by means of similar
procedures.
EVALUATION
This volume can be regarded as a contribution to the on-going trend in
Discourse Studies which focuses on the dynamics between language and other
significant social phenomena. What is distinctive about this study is its
interdisciplinary approach to the political discourses of the new European
extreme right. No other systematic analysis is currently available in which
such a comprehensive survey of the historical dynamics involving contemporary
(neo)fascist discourse is provided — with the exception of another volume
recently published of which Ruth Wodak is also one of the editors (Wodak,
Khosravinik & Mral 2013).
The combination of methodologies involving critical discourse analysis (CDA —
Fairclough 1995, 2001) and the discourse-historical approach (DHA — Reisigl
& Wodak 2009) responds to the necessity of theorising the context — that is,
to integrate the context-sensitivity potential of DHA into the general
framework of CDA. This allows the authors to fulfil their goal of determining
continuities and discontinuities regarding a fascist discursive nucleus and
its contemporary manifestations by means of comparative diachronic case
studies. They find that this nucleus has survived the passage of time, whilst
some of its particular forms are highly context-dependent and vary in
different ways.
Given their consensus on the importance of context in approaching discourse,
the authors offer more or less exhaustive accounts of the historical
conditions of the countries involved. This, along with the technical and
theoretical sections, amounts to a widening of the potential audience for the
volume, which already includes researchers engaged in the academic study of
language, and also scholars and students interested in contemporary politics.
Certain common orientations can be found in the book: the aforementioned
theoretical and methodological assumptions from which the case studies depart,
their shared purpose of attending to the continuities and discontinuities of
the discourses analysed and the critical perspective they adopt. The fact that
almost every chapter is devoted to a different European country contributes to
a general picture of far-right movements in present time. The results of some
case studies presented in the book show how European far-right rhetoric is
shifting from a nationalist to a more trans-national scope. The diversity of
the case studies is helpful in perceiving the different modalities of the
symbolic practices as well as the ways in which they intertwine and act
simultaneously in the process of (re)production of the symbolic order.
The book was not conceived as a theoretically oriented work. Nonetheless, a
more detailed account of some notions could have been useful. For instance,
the idea that there is a core ideology seems to be broadly accepted, and even
though there is much discussion about the difficulty of defining fascism and
the idiosyncratic aspects involved in the very gesture of defining it,
significant sources that could have been relevant concerning this issue are
not discussed or just circumstantially mentioned (e.g. Thompson 1984 and Žižek
1989 onwards). Another aspect related to ideology involves the implicit
idealisation of democracy that has a twofold function: because it works as the
point of neutralisation of ideology, it stands for a zero-level from which the
other discourses are characterised.
For future research on political discourse and the current status of the
European far right, this volume stands out as a referent inasmuch as it
provides readers with a wide-ranging perspective on the discursive resources
on which right-wing political forces rely in pursuing their goals. A possible
continuation of this study could be to approach these discourses not just as
instances of (neo)fascist ideology that threaten the foundations of today’s
democracy but, conversely, as complementary social phenomena that function
within the limits of a common (globalised) ideological framework. An
exceptional illustration of this point is provided in Pinto’s chapter. He sets
up a preliminary comparative study involving Civics textbooks under Franco and
current Education for Citizenship manuals, concluding that “the two
contemporary books appear to employ many of the same linguistic devices with
regard to the discourse structure and the mechanisms of legitimation and
control that were found to be recurring in the Franco texts” (139). Moreover,
the only significant difference he finds between these two texts has to do
with the rhetoric of equality: “imbalanced relations of power, similar to
those of the past, continue to exist” (140). How is it, then, that under the
European allegedly-democratic framework and beside decades of legislation and
social non-acceptability, fascism still thrives as a mobilising force? This
apparent contradiction fades away once the complementarity between democratic
and fascist discourses as well as their function under the capitalist global
social order are acknowledged.
REFERENCES
Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis. Boston: Addison Wesley.
Fairclough, Norman. 2001. Language and Power (2nd edition). London: Longman.
Griffin, Roger (ed.). 1998. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the
New Consensus. London: Arnold.
Reisigl, Martin & Ruth Wodak. 2009. The discourse historical approach. In Ruth
Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.). Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis. London:
Sage. 87-121.
Thompson, John B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Wodak Ruth, Majid Khosravinik & Brigitte Mral (eds.). 2013. Right-Wing
Populism in Europe. Discourse and Politics. London: Bloomsbury.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Rubén Moralejo is a doctoral student at the Universidade de Vigo (Spain).
Currently, he is doing research on the role ideology plays within the context
of (industrial) production. He focuses on the relation between language,
ideology and society. His research interests have to do with the critical
study of the ideology of capitalism.
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