Nationalism and othering of Europe in Polish right-wing media (2015-2020)

Since the victory of Law and Justice (PiS) and its coalition partners in 2015, Poland has witnessed an illiberal and nationalist turn. The public discourse has become dominated by the notion of national sovereignty understood as an absolute value, that should not be shared or delegated to a supranational level. The key role in the process of legitimizing and consolidating the power of the right-wing national populists has been played by the media, which not only transmitted national(ist) message of political leaders, but also actively contributed to the new national narrative. The images of national community have most convincingly been painted through various the practices of othering, allowing to draw the boundary between the in-group and what it stands for, and the out-group, “the other” perceived as not belonging to the group, disruptive and threatening its well-being. This paper focuses specifically on the strategies of othering of Europe and the EU used by national populists in Poland in the name of promoting (and defending) Polish national traditional values, which have been portrayed as endangered by the post-Enlightenment, liberal, cosmopolitan values professed by the EU. The authors focus specifically on media narratives by studying Polish right-wing weekly magazines (2015-2020). The study is twofold combining the analysis of interviews with populist political figures, and the interpretation of magazine covers (textual and visual). The goal of the paper is to explore the ways in which the national self is contrasted with the European other in media narratives in contemporary Poland.