Right wing movements have been growing in popularity in both Europe and America over the last two decades. The main example of this being Donald Trump’s victory in the American elections. Multiple European right wing leaders, like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders have chances of winning elections in the near future as well. Therefore, it is interesting to take a closer look at the discourse they use, to see if and how they are different from government representatives.
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Whereas Mark Rutte does not manage to reach his audience, Geert Wilders does. On the 11th of February 2016 he debated in a refugee debate in the Dutch parliament.10 His speech turned out to be one big speech act, based on a framework of politics of exception. He argued that refugees are a danger to our society, our internal security, and the welfare state. And even though in the debate it is pointed out that he is lying, this does not matter to him. He manages to reach his audience, the population of the Netherlands. He wants to get his message out to the people who vote in the political process, this to boost his popularity and create outside pressure on the ruling elite (De Vries, 2016).
Geert Wilders does not have the political power to change laws himself, however he challenges hegemonic discourses in a different way. His use of securitizing speech acts influences the government indirectly. He aims to influence a large part of the Dutch population, who in turn demand a reaction from the ruling elite. This changes the hegemonic discourse to encompass the demands made by the population. The power of securitizing moves is on display here, because lying is not necessarily a downfall. By populists like Wilders it is used to get their interests on the political agenda.
‘We already have 7 million unemployed, 10 million poor, and 1.5 million households waiting for social housing. We cannot accommodate anyone. It is therefore absolutely vital to bring
an end to the Schengen system, to allow each country to control its own borders’ (Le Pen, 2016)
Marine Le Pen is comparable to Geert Wilders, in that she too leads a major right-wing party in her country. Her discourse is also comparable. This quote from her shows how she structures her securitizing argument. First she puts emphasis on the crisis of the welfare state in France, building on feelings of unease in the country. Then, in the second part she securitizes the importance of sovereignty of the state. Thus, she first employs a discourse of politics of unease, building on already existing feelings in France, she follows this up by creating a discourse of politics of exceptions. This results in an argument that combines multiple facilitating variables, on both sovereignty and the welfare state. Additionally, it builds on growing feelings of unease in society, while making sure that the state related sovereignty point is the referent object that needs to be protected.
10 Unfortunately, the whole speech is in Dutch and there are no translations available. Therefore, there are no
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‘The division is already there, [if] we have to talk about children in school not being able to do their swimming lessons together. If now we have to talk about separate bathing times in public swimming pools, it's not us creating division, the division is already there because there are different cultural backgrounds. And being a melting pot is okay. And Germany has been a melting pot for a very long time, but it is question of time and numbers, isn't it? And if I want to move into a new country, if I'm an immigrant, then I think that it is fairly obvious that I have to assimilate to a certain degree into the new country, if I want to be a part of it. This has always been like that’ (Petry, 2016).
Besides speeches there are other ways through which right-wing politicians can voice their opinion. Frauke Petry represents the AfD right-wing party in Germany. In an interview in March of 2016 she had to defend her position in relation to her critique of the German melting-pot society. Being the representative from her policy community, she voices a discourse directly opposing Angela Merkel’s desecuritizing narrative. With a clear focus on integration and ethnicity her opinion is solely based on ‘politics of unease’. And even though she does not overtly emphasise her points as speech acts, she has a continued uttering of different facilitating variables in this interview. Matteo Salvini, a right-wing Italian European parliament member does this in a similar way:
‘Is it going to review its own migration policies to make them more restrictive, including in consideration of the crisis conditions they are already causing in many European States?’ Salvini, 2015)
‘What strategies is it setting in place to protect European citizens from the possibility of further attacks by Islamic terrorists?’ (Salvini, 2015).
These two questions show a similar tendency. Whereas Salvini and Petry do not directly securitize by means of speech acts, they do voice a continuous, non-changing, discourse. By focussing on politics of exception and politics of unease they create a constant narrative that shows their intention, and it shows that they are reliable. It is clear that they will stick to their position. This cannot be uncovered by the Copenhagen School of thought’s securitization theory. Whereas the focus on facilitating variables, as presented by the extended version of securitization, does show this.
Based on France and the Netherlands we can conclude that the extended version of securitization provides a lot of information on political power relations and on how and why securitizing arguments are constructed in the manner that they are. Explicitly, the
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discrepancies in the speech act use of Francois Hollande and the audience interactions of both Wilders and Rutte can be explained and analysed by having a framework in which politics of unease, exception, and discourses of securitization are separated and divided in individual categories in the framework of facilitating conditions. Additionally, the agenda-setting framework that focuses on policy streams shows the process through which ideas end up on the political agenda. Enabling easier analysis of what ideas come from what policy community and what hegemonic discourse is that they challenge. Geert Wilders is an interesting example of this, because he and his PVV (his policy community) challenge the hegemonic discourse by not directly expecting results, but by influencing the population, who in turn put pressure on the hegemonic discourse. He influences the ‘popular will’, who in turn effect the balance between themselves and the ‘political leadership’, as explained in the framework on political power by both Huysmans (2004) and Buonfino (2004). All this together shows the merit of this experimental first edition of the extended version of securitization theory.
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