How to Make People Feel Good When Wishing Hell: Golden Dawn and National Front Discourse, Emotions and Argumentation

Abstract

Drawing on Kristeva's thesis that nationalism is a pervasive discourse of exclusion based on " a defensive hatred " where " the cult of origins easily backslides to a persecuting hatred " (Kristeva 1993), the main argument of this chapter is to demonstrate that extreme right parties such as the National Front in France and Golden Dawn in Greece are constructing a different ethos, having the same far-right political aims. In particular, the analysis of their discursive practices for constructing differently their political arguments (defensive resentment vs perse-cuting hatred) are based on different emotions as well (contempt vs. pride) while appealing to the same argumentative stance (the cults of origins for instance). Indeed, if they both deliver the same nationalistic discourse of " reciprocal exclu-sion " , Marine Le Pen's persona, discourse and behaviour are based, as will be argued here, on a " defensive resentment " , focusing on the Self via the emotion of pride. On the other hand, Golden Dawn's leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, uses gestures, speeches and symbols, which encourage a virulent " persecuting hatred " , focusing on the despised Other via the emotion of contempt. Focusing on the metaphors and linguistic symbolisms used to embody these emotions, we will show using van Dijk's theory of ideology in discourse and corpus linguistic methodology, that these tropes are conducive to legitimating, triggering and per-petuating social practices of exclusion of some specific communities as well as symbolic or physical violence against the same communities. Even though many studies have been conducted in the fields of pragmatics and intercultural studies aiming to bridge cultural differences (Angouri 2010) and promoting cross-cultural awareness, the opposite trend, protectionism and nation-alism, is looming in the field of politics. Due to anxiety over recession, high levels of unemployment and immigration, far-right wing parties have considerably grown and gained breeding ground. As a matter of fact, the themes of borders and national identity were the focus of many 2012 French and Greek presidential elections speeches (Sarkozy and Le Pen political campaigns for France and Golden Dawn for Greece). This chapter aims to demonstrate that extreme right parties such as the National Front in France and Golden Dawn in Greece are constructing a different ethos, through similar but complementary discursive practices (defensive resentment vs. persecuting hatred), while appealing to the same argumentative power of emotions. Marine Le Pen's persona, discourse and behaviour are based, as will be argued in this study, on a " defensive resentment " , focusing on the Self via the emotion of pride. On the other hand, Golden Dawn's leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, uses gestures, speeches and symbols which encour-age a virulent " persecuting hatred " , focusing on the despised Other via the emotion of contempt. Based on both written (articles about the leaders, political agenda and ideology of the National Front and Golden Dawn) and oral data (speeches by and interviews with Parties' leaders and members), this chapter focuses on discursive (metaphors) and semiotic strategies employed to embody these emotions. The theoretical framework consists of an integration of Rhetorical Psychology (Billig 1978 for instance) and Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) (van Dijk 1995 et passim) approaches; our methodology includes corpus linguistic tools such as AntConc and TermoStat and takes into account statistical parameters such as frequency and specificity.