Migration and Recent Aspects of Right-Wing Populist Discourse in Europe

Intensifying migration processes in the West are reflected in certain changes in the discourse of European right-wing populist and nationalist parties. Along with anti-mass migration sentiments, rhetoric of these political forces demonstrates new elements related to the topics of “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington), as well as civilizational solidarity - the ideas of “civilizationism” (Brubaker). In the context of global transformations and changes in the ethno-cultural landscape of the continent, European nationalists became less prone to tradition for their ideology thesis of intra-European animosity. On the other hand, it tend to rhetorically transform, and usually extend, the boundaries of imagined community of “the European fortress”, which needs to be defended. Principal dichotomy of today’s European right-wing populist rhetoric is represented by the secular post-Christian community (“us”) and seemingly archaic and fundamentalist migrant community from Muslim countries (“the others”).