Far-right discourse as legitimacy? Analysing political rhetoric on the “migration issue” in Greece
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2021.02.014Keywords:
New Democracy, discourse-historical approach, topos, fallacy, argumentation, Greek politics, securitisationAbstract
This article advances research on the normalisation of far-right rhetoric on the “migration issue” by analysing statements from the current Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the ruling political party New Democracy political figures. Having presented the discourse-historical approach (DHA) from critical discourse studies (CDS) as a suitable theory and method of analysis of political discourses, I use an argumentative-based DHA approach and add the argumentative schemes of Aristotelian topoi and fallacies to explore how the leadership of the conservative New Democracy government adopted far-right rhetoric on the refugee issue to justify its tough political agenda on security, law, and order. In particular, I focus on the representation of migration as a threat to national security and public health, the politics of hate, and theories of securitisation via an in-depth analysis of the current and former prime ministers’ discourses, the former government spokesman’s statement on the refugee issue and a popular journalist and New Democracy’s MP television interview, and intend to illustrate how extreme right rhetoric could serve the conservative New Democracy’s political strategies.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Salomi Boukala

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.