Religion and the populist radical right in western Europe

To test this hypothesis, the thesis analyses the discourse of two populist radical right parties in Western Europe: The National Front (now known as National Rally) of France, and the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands. This analysis has two parts: The first tests part of my hypothesis: that Europeans’ encounter with Islam in Europe has (1) revealed the non-universal nature of European secularism to Europeans, and (2) demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into ‘culture.’ The second consists of Critical Discourse This thesis seeks to understand the role of religion in the discourse of Western Europe’s populist radical right parties. Populist radical right parties have made extraordinary electoral gains in a number of Western European nations. Many of these parties call for a return to Christian and/or Judeo-Christian values, and for the Christian and/or Judeo-Christian identity of their respective nations to be respected and preserved. Muslims, in particular, are singled out by the populist radical right as a threat to Western Christian values and identity. Yet these populist radical right parties do not appear to be advocates of a religious doctrine or way of life; rather, they most often frame themselves as defenders of secularism. This is curious: if populist radical right parties in Western Europe are secular, when then has Christian or Judeo-Christian identity become such an important aspect of their discourse? Building on sociologist Rogers Brubaker’s observation that populist radical right parties in Western Europe are not genuinely religious, but rather Christian identitarian in orientation, this thesis contends that populist radical right parties use religion in their discourse in order to exclude Muslims from European society, and to protect their respective secular nationalisms. Therefore the primary question asked in this thesis is: why is religion used as a tool to differentiate ‘the people’ from ‘the other’ in the discourse of the populist radical right in Western Europe? The thesis proposes a hypothesis: Western Europeans’ encounter with Islam in Europe has (1) revealed the non-universal nature of Western European secularism to Europeans, and (2) demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into Western European ‘culture.’ This recognition that Christianity has been secularised into ‘culture’ has allowed secular Europeans to identify themselves – and their nation and ultimately Western civilisation – as Christian or Judeo-Christian. These effects have precipitated the formation of Christianist secularism, a type of Christian identitarian politics which perceives contemporary European culture to be ‘Christianity secularised.’ A group of populist radical right parties in Western Europe, then, have embraced Christianist secularism, which they use to define their respective national identities in religio-civilisational terms, i.e. as (Judeo-)Christian. In doing so, they are able to exclude Muslims from their society, on the grounds that Islam is an alien religion which – unlike Christianity and possibly Judaism – has not and cannot be secularised into ‘culture'. Analysis of three selected texts produced by the respective leaders of the National Front and Party for Freedom, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, produced during the 2012-2017 period. The Critical Discourse Analysis seeks answers in the selected to the following questions: (1) does the discourse display the key elements of Christianist secularism? (2) How is Islam constructed in the discourse? (3) How is Christian identity used to exclude Muslims from European society

Belonging as a responsive strategy in times of supercomplexity and change

Belonging as a responsive strategy in times of supercomplexity and change Abstract Since 2011 the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University has been actively supporting an ethos of belonging throughout their learning and teaching. In 2017 ‘belonging’ became a formal university priority, embedded in the institution’s strategy and dispersed across Colleges and Schools through a range of activities and interventions. However, in the supercomplex COVID-19 landscape, practices of belonging are being reconsidered and reimagined for online learning environments. This paper outlines some of the reasons why belonging should be prioritised during times of intense change and complexity. We outline a range of responsive initiatives that have assisted staff and students as they rapidly shifted to a learning and teaching environment. Indeed, given our grounding in the field of media and communication, we seek to demonstrate that embracing supercomplexity through a disciplinary focus can in fact be productive for staff and students alike. Through this discussion we demonstrate how a belonging strategy at the institutional level can be translated as embedded practice at the level of the discipline and within micro-level classroom interventions

Belonging in Space: Informal Learning Spaces and the Student Experience

In the face of diverse challenges to traditional higher education (HE) models, creating and defining the value of an on-campus student experience has become a key concern for HE institutions. Originating in response to these challenges, The Belonging Project seeks to improve the student experience in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. As part of its pilot initiatives, we worked to refurbish an existing but underused space in the School, the Atelier. This paper documents the refurbishment and its outcomes, while situating the process within a broader literature on student engagement and transition

The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia

The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, which is usually reported in terms of songs or stories associated with stars and constellations. Here we argue that the astronomical components extend further, and include a search for meaning in the sky, beyond simply mirroring the earth-bound understanding. In particular, we have found that traditional Aboriginal cultures include a deep understanding of the motion of objects in the sky, and that this knowledge was used for practical purposes such as constructing calendars. We also present evidence that traditional Aboriginal Australians made careful records and measurements of cyclical phenomena, and paid careful attention to unexpected phenomena such as eclipses and meteorite impacts.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, IAU 260 conference proceeding

Crikey, The Australian and the politics of professional status in Australian journalism

This article presents a case study of editorial content in an ongoing `war of words' between two Australian publications independent daily email news source Crikey and the Murdoch-owned broadsheet newspaper The Australian in order to demonstrate one of the struggles over professional status in the changing Australian media environment. This negotiation over professional status exemplifies the way in which rhetorics of professionalism are used to gain authority over the particular jurisdiction of journalism. Considering this example in relation to dominant discussions of journalistic professionalism, this article demonstrates the limitations of the ways in which many of these discussions are framed, and works to place professionalism within a framework that positions journalism as a cultural technology

Interactivity and journalism's changing social role: two Australian case studies

Domingo argues that interactivity has always been 'at the epicentre of online journalism myths' (685) - often held as an ideal, but rarely adopted in practice. Given the centrality of interactivity to discussions around the potential of the internet in general, and online news in particular, this paper adopts this topic as a lens through which to examine the changing news business and practice of journalism. Through the consideration of two Australian case studies - The Age Online and Crikey - this paper argues that the adoption of interactive features at online news sites needs to be understood in relation to the broader political and economic changes in which news and journalism operate. In this framework, discussions of interactivity are refigured from a matter of technological consideration to the negotiation of journalism's historical social role

Mapping the future of news in a digital world: US and Australian perspectives

Abstract not availabl

Civilizational Populism: Definition, Literature, Theory, and Practice

The purpose of this article is to clarify the concept of ‘civilizational populism’ and work towards a concise but operational definition. To do this, the article examines how populists across the world, and in a variety of different religious, geographic, and political contexts, incorporate and instrumentalize notions of ‘civilization’ into their discourses. The article observes that although a number of scholars have described a civilization turn among populists, there is currently no concrete definition of civilization populism, a concept which requires greater clarity. The article also observes that, while scholars have often found populists in Europe incorporating notions of civilization and ‘the clash of civilizations’ into the discourses, populists in non-Western environments also appear to have also incorporated notions of civilization into their discourses, yet these are rarely studied. The first part of the article begins by discussing the concept of ‘civilizationism’, a political discourse which emphasizes the civilizational aspect of social and especially national identity. Following this, the article discusses populism and describes how populism itself cannot succeed unless it adheres to a wider political programme or broader set of ideas, and without the engendering or exploiting of a ‘crisis’ which threatens ‘the people’. The article then examines the existing literature on the civilization turn evident among populists. The second part of the article builds on the previous section by discussing the relationship between civilizationism and populism worldwide. To do this, the paper examines civilizational populism in three key nations representing three of the world’s major faiths, and three different geographical regions: Turkey, India, and Myanmar. The paper makes three findings. First, while scholars have generally examined civilizational identity in European and North American right-wing populist rhetoric, we find it occurring in a wider range of geographies and religious contexts. Second, civilizationism when incorporated into populism gives content to the key signifiers: ‘the pure people’, ‘the corrupt elite’, and ‘dangerous ‘others’. In each case studied in this article, populists use a civilization based classification of peoples to draw boundaries around ‘the people’, ‘elites’ and ‘others’, and declare that ‘the people’ are ‘pure’ and ‘good’ because they belong to a civilization which is itself pure and good, and authentic insofar as they belong to the civilization which created the nation and culture which populists claim to be defending. Conversely, civilizational populists describe elites as having betrayed ‘the people’ by abandoning the religion and/or values and culture that shaped and were shaped by their civilization. Equally, civilizational populists describe religious minorities as ‘dangerous’ others who are morally bad insofar as they belong to a foreign civilization, and therefore to a different religion and/or culture with different values which are antithetical to those of ‘our’ civilization. Third, civilizational populist rhetoric is effective insofar as populists’ can, by adding a civilizational element to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of their populism, claim a civilizational crisis is occurring. Finally, based on the case studies, the paper defines civilizational populism as a group of ideas that together considers that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people, and society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ who collaborate with the dangerous others belonging to other civilizations that are hostile and present a clear and present danger to the civilization and way of life of the pure people

Understanding Civilizational Populism in Europe and North America: The United States, France, and Poland

This article tests the salience of the concept of “civilizational populism” in the European and North American contexts. Right-wing populism is increasingly successful across a range of countries in Europe and North America. While right-wing populism is oriented toward nationalism and nativism, many right-wing populist parties increasingly perceive, as Brubaker puts it, the “opposition between self and other” and “the boundaries of belonging” not in narrow “national but in broader civilizational terms”. Yilmaz and Morieson describe this phenomenon as “civilizational populism”. Using Cas Mudde’s ideological/ideational definition of populism, Yilmaz and Morieson describe civilizational populism as “a group of ideas that together considers that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people, and society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ who collaborate with the dangerous others belonging to other civilizations that are hostile and present a clear and present danger to the civilization and way of life of the pure people”. Civilizational populism appears to be widespread across Europe, and it is also present in the United States, although there is curiously little research on this phenomenon, and Yilmaz and Morieson’s conception of civilizational populism has not been extensively tested. To test the salience of this concept, this article examines three distinct manifestations of civilizational rhetoric in three different countries: the Trump administration in the United States, National Rally in France, and PiS in Poland. The article asks the following two questions. What role does civilizationalism play in populist discourses? How do the civilizational populists in France, Poland, and the United States define “the people”, “elites”, and “others”, and what are the similarities and differences between the parties/movements examined? The article finds that all three parties/movements may be termed “civilizational populists” under the definition given by Yilmaz and Morieson. It finds that the civilizational populists examined in the article posit that “elites” are immoral insofar as they have both turned away from the “good” religion-derived cultural values of “the people” and permitted or desired the immigration of people who do not share the culture and values as “the people”, instead belonging to a foreign civilization—Islam—with different and even antithetical values. However, the article finds that “the people”, “elites”, and “others” are described by Trump, Le Pen, and Kaczyński in significantly different ways