New political parties breaking into ‘political game’ need a distinction vis-à-vis established competitors. Traditionally ideals, issues, leadership types, novel to competition field, are used for standing out. In contrast, the paper offers a case study of political novices’ bizarre appeal that (a) embodies erasure of traditional dimension of ‘content’/signified, and (b) embeds itself in the ‘form’/signifier. Interpretative discourse analysis and semiotics allow decoding visual advertising of National Resurrection Party (NRP), a newcomer who ‘jumped’ into Lithuanian ruling coalition in 2008-2012. NRP’s visual code represents a quirky combination of playful self-irony and sober poststructuralist critique of ‘political economy of sign’ (Baudrillard, 1981, 1995) enabling NRP to repudiate politics of electoral appeals (as futile promises), medium of advertising (as an empty signifier) and political competitors (as masters of seduction), elevating NRP as self-reflexive, radical, Truth-speaking Other. The paper also accounts why traditional content analysis techniques fail to grasp the nature RNP’s appeal.
