Embattled Vienna 1683/2010: right-wing populism, collective memory and the fictionalisation of politics

Abstract

The victory of a Christian coalition over Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in 1683 marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman presence in Central and Eastern Europe and the simultaneous rise of the Habsburg Empire in this region. Memories of these events still circulate in present-day Vienna and provide an emotional reservoir for anti-Turkish sentiments. Current tendencies to fictionalise politics support the dissemination of such anti-Turkish narratives in rather unconventional and hybrid genres such as comic-style booklets. In this article, the authors investigate the interplay of collective memories and this hybrid genre within the social context of the fictionalisation of politics through the test case of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), one of the most successful European right-wing populist parties. By combining multimodal analysis with the discourse–historical approach in critical discourse analysis, they illustrate the ways in which visuals enable the conveying of contradictory meanings through a discursive strategy of calculated ambivalence by blurring past and present, fiction and reality.

The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe

“…Our aim is, however, to look much deeper than just into words, notions, or concepts (or merely into political and media representations of the recent occurrences). Indeed, we recognize that the discourses on the Refugee Crisis are part of, on the one hand, changing/shifting hegemonic political agendas and related discourses and, on the other, a token of negative implications of the wider and indeed preexisting processes of simultaneous politicization and mediatization of immigration (e.g., Baker et al, 2008;Messer et al, 2012;Reisigl & Wodak, 2000;Wodak & Forchtner, 2014).…”

Discursive constructions of otherness in populist radical right political blogs

“…The ‘nation at war’ narrative enables these leaders to rationalize and legitimize anti‐social attitudes and harsher treatment of migrants and minorities. Similarly, in a study focusing on the Austrian right‐wing context, Wodak and Forchtner () demonstrated how shared narratives of the battle of Vienna against the Ottoman Empire still circulate in present‐day Vienna and are used by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). The past and present, fiction and reality are blended in these narratives to create calculated ambivalence and a ‘lesson from the past’, which provide an emotional reservoir for contemporary anti‐Turkish sentiments.…”

“…Recent studies have highlighted the use of collective memory and nostalgia in the legitimization of radical right views (e.g., Mols & Jetten, 2014;Wodak & Forchtner, 2014). Mols and Jetten (2014) examined speeches of populist right-wing party leaders in France, the Netherlands and Belgium.…”

‘We are the new Jews!’ and ‘The Jewish Lobby’ – antisemitism and the construction of a national identity by the Austrian Freedom Party

“…It is a specific feature of cartoons and comics that they ‘blend images and words sequentially in order to narrate a story’ (Wodak and Forchtner : 233), with compositional elements such as colour and perspectives being used as tools to transport a message on a more subtle level. ‘Arguably, the visual is particularly salient given that the image is scanned before written text is read.’ ( ibid.…”