The Covid-19 Crisis as an Ideological Armoury for the Populist Right in Spain and Italy
As Europe begins to emerge from a troublesome part of the pandemic, we begin to evaluate emerging political damages. The current Covid-19 crisis could reshape Europe by menacing liberal institutionalism and acting as democracy’s mirror: the crisis constitutes an ammunition armoury for radical right-wing populism and widens the already fragile fissures within the European Union. Now more than ever, we must understand how radical right populist groupings design their message towards vulnerable, crisis-shaken populations. Disentangling common denominators of the various political strands subscribed to an approximate heterogeneous radical right-wing populist tradition and using specific mechanisms within the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, this interdisciplinary research project purports to explore the new populist radical right discourse triggered by the crisis in Spain and Italy, and to what extent its rhetoric can be substantiated by analysing how right-wing populist parties can corrode liberal democracies in times of crisis: the objective of this study is to reflect critically on the interplay between democracy and the rule of law, analysing the very recent discourse development of the parties Vox and The League and its power relations, which are linked to the exogenous shocks provoked by the pandemic.
