“Here, the Hungarian people will decide how to raise our children”: Populist rhetoric and social categorization in Viktor Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ campaign in Hungary

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán uses social categorization and populist rhetoric in an anti-LGBTQ campaign. Drawing on social identity theory and the scholarship on populist rhetoric and anti-LGBTQ politics, the article examines 46 interviews, press statements, public speeches, and op-eds by Orbán. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, it shows how the prime minister frames LGBTQ communities as an out-group that poses a threat to Hungarian values and way of living. Similar to the issue of immigration and existing anti-LGBTQ frames in other countries, Orbán presents LGBTQ groups within his well-established anti-Western narrative. In addition, he connects LGBTQ communities to other out-groups that have been portrayed as a threat for a long time. The study sheds new light on the linguistic strategies of Orbán and shows how populist rhetoric and social categorization complement each other in a political campaign.

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“…Discourse analysis, as used in social psychology, examines the language people choose and the goals accomplished by such choices (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Several studies have used discourse analysis to elucidate how communicators craft representations of social categories to suit their agendas (e.g., Gera, 2023;Herrera & Reicher, 1998;Montiel et al, 2016;Reicher & Hopkins, 1996). Within health care, Kreindler (2015) explored how managers, clinicians, and even patient associations weaponized the seemingly innocuous concept of patient-centred care to attack perceived outgroups.…”