Freedom in Populist Radical Right Discourses: The Polish ‘Island of Freedom’ in the 2019 European Parliament Election

In Europe, the populist radical right (PRR) has actively embarked on a discursive struggle over the notion of freedom – one of the underlying concepts of Western сulture. An investigation of the 2019 European election campaign of the Polish Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [PiS]) highlights how PRR parties in power discursively construct freedom in the context(s) of the European Union (EU). In PiS’s discourse, freedom serves as an antagonistic national-populist and nativist tool that juxtaposes Polish national identity against the imagined enemies of PiS-led Poland at home and abroad.
Keywords: freedom; discourse; populist radical right; Europe; Poland; EU