Ultranationalist discourses of exclusion : a comparison between the Hungarian Jobbik and the Greek Golden Dawn

Abstract

In this paper I present the extensive discourse analysis of texts produced by the electorally exceptionally successful Greek and Hungarian ultranationalist parties. I first demonstrate that although both have adopted the topics, arguments and rhetorical figures of racist discourse, they differ in the relative importance they attach to culture and biology. That is, while GD imposes rigid, impermeable boundaries to a nation bound together by the ties of common ancestry, excluding 'others' on grounds of purported racial inferiority, Jobbik focuses more on culture as the dominant marker that separates off 'us' from 'them'. I then try to explain the emergent patterns by relating them to context-specific categorisation strategies as well as the historically constituted conceptions of 'Greekness' and 'Hungarianness'. I show that the construction of 'otherness' is markedly different in the two societies in terms of the chosen 'enemies', the preferred identity-markers as well as the processes of boundary drawing. The findings demonstrate that we need to think in a more differentiated way about the possible configurations of the culture/biology and difference/superiority nexus as shaped by the historically constituted and deeply rooted perceptions of difference in each context.