Analyzing Religious Populist and Far Right Dynamics in Greece: An Interdisciplinary- Discourse Oriented Approach

The permanent economic, political and social crisis in Europe and a series of shocks that challenge European unification and lead to a fragile balance between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ have caused enormous tensions within Europe and the European Union. Eurosceptic and nationalist and far-right movements and leaders across Europe blame the EU and demand a return to forms of traditional nativist nationalism/chauvinism. Furthermore, far-right parties across Europe use nationalist rhetoric and follow ultranationalist policies in the name of people’s security, thus illustrating that the nation-state’s dynamics have not been surpassed by the EU; quite the contrary they have led to the “normalization” of far-right discourses and tactics. Our paper focuses on “religious-populist far right” actors as a particular subcategory” of populist far-right politics. Recent research has shown that populist far-right parties have taken advantage of the ideational and material capabilities provided by religion to capture state institutions through elections. By emphasizing the institutional incompleteness of the EU, far-right discourses tap into religion to resurge memories of a divided Europe and enforce nationalism and national identity. At the same time, far-right leaders make use of social media as a digital public sphere to circumvent traditional news channels. In fact, studies have shown that violence against ethnic and religious minorities is motivated and legitimized in social media. Through this vein, our paper seeks to explore the resurgence of national sovereignty’s imaginaries and the discursive deconstruction of European solidarity in times of crisis. By bringing together Critical Discourse Analysis, especially the discursive strategies of the Discourse Historical Approach, and the Aristotelian tradition, and a Face-book discourse oriented ethnography (Boukala, 2025), we intend to examine the role of the Greek Orthodox narratives that overlap with populist far-right narratives in reshaping Greek nationalism and challenging, thus, European identity imaginaries. Our case studies are significant events in Greece that brought to the fore the tension between the European and the national, such as the issue of the naming of Macedonia, the new identity cards, the COVID vaccines and examine populist far-right actors with a strong religious narrative, such as parties (e.g. Greek Solution, Victory), leaders or grassroots groups and present how their digital presence interacts with their physical presence and the results of such interaction. The significance of our paper is that it studies the religious populist far-right narratives as an independent variable in Greece that can develop its own dynamics and relate to lasting transformations of political institutions and modalities of power. On the other hand, we argue that it is exactly the religious narratives that is linked to the diffusion and normalization of discriminatory discourse that is not limited to far-right parties, quite the contrary it also characterizes the Greek right wing political spectrum.