Right-wing populism and exclusionary politics
Studying Jair Bolsonaro's populist discourse to a corpus of X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29105/gmjmx22.42-541Keywords:
exclusionary populism, Brazil, Bolsonaro, speech, XAbstract
The literature on populism highlights that one of the distinctive features of right-wing populism is its exclusionary nature. However, there are few works that empirically analyze this issue in Latin American right-wing populisms, since most of them focus on European societies, where this variant is considered to be dominant. This article aims to fill this gap. We investigate this question using automated text analysis tools to identify keywords that are theorized to characterize radical right-wing populist language. Then, at a second level, we examine the contexts in which these keywords are used. The main findings show that Bolsonaro’s vocabulary in X is distinguished by a set of keywords that clearly reflect the ideological approach of exclusionary populisms, which are based on a trichotomous antagonism between “the people,” “the elite,” and “dangerous others.” By studying a case outside Europe, our results have implications for how radical right-wing populism is studied, as well as highlighting the ideological features that Bolsonaro's populism combines to culturally justify exclusion, which differ from European right-wing populisms.
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