Europe versus Islam? Right-wing Populist discourse and the construction of a civilizational identity

In this paper, we look at the manifestos of the populist parties as well as their highly mediatized statements on culture, heritage, and national identity. This paper reveals the ways in which five populist parties in Europe, Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, National Front (FN) in France, Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy, and Golden Dawn (GD) in Greece), employ fear of Islam as a political instrument to mobilize their supporters and to mainstream themselves. The study is conducted through a discourse analysis of the speeches and manifestos of the aforementioned parties. Following the depiction of each political party, the paper displays some of quotations from the fieldwork to be able to explicate their common tropes about their Islamophobic, migrant-phobic, and diversity-phobic discourses of the supporters of populist parties. The main premise of the paper is to claim that these parties have recently generated a civilizational discourse in order to expand their electorate.