According to political realism, conflict is an
immanent feature of world politics (Morgenthau 1948/1973). Drawing on this
basic premise, it can be expected that the conflict
frame is routinely exploited by politicians to explain and justify their
foreign policy (Musolff 2016). Conflict is especially prevalent in populist
narratives, where the “pure people” are juxtaposed with the “corrupt elite”
(Mudde 2004). Accordingly, we hypothesized that the current Hungarian populist
government would also frame its turbulent relationship with the EU by
metaphorically conceptualizing it as a violent conflict. Drawing on a discourse
dynamics approach to metaphor identification (Cameron et al. 2009; 2010), we
analysed the metaphorical framing of the term Brüsszel (‘Brussels’) found in articles published on official
government websites between 2015 and 2017. Our results indicate that explicit
manifestation of the conflict
frame in the form of violent conflict (such as a military operation) is less
prevalent in contemporary government rhetoric, as opposed to the eu as person frame. This latter
conceptualization, however, is manifested by metaphorical scenarios that evoke
conflictual relations with varying degrees (and thus feed into populist
narratives) by making sense of the EU as an authority figure, a partner in a
joint venture, a bully, and an opponent in a battle.