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 persecuting 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 exclusion”, 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 perpetuating social practices of exclusion of some specific communities as well as symbolic or physical violence against the same communities.