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Articulations of ‘Cultural Warfare’: analyzing the metapolitical implications of right wing online culture war discourse for civil society actors in Flanders, Belgium

par Zienkowski, Jan ;Calabrese, Laura
Référence Discourse theory: ways forward (2nd edition) (23-24 Mai 2023: Brussels)
Publication Non publié, 2023-04-24

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Résumé :

This paper analyzes the metapolitical dimension of right-wing culture war discourse and its implications for civil society organizations in Flanders, Belgium. The author proposes to enrich discourse theory and populism studies with the notion of metapolitical conflict. In metapolitics, distinct imaginaries over what politics is and should be clash (Zienkowski 2019; Zienkowski and De Cleen 2020). The author provides a qualitative, CAQDAS supported discourse analysis of statements on cultural warfare, published on Doorbraak, a radical Flemish nationalist online medium. He focuses on articulations of cultuuroorlog (cultural warfare) and cultuurstrijd (cultural struggle) with(in) problematizations of Flemish civil society actors. He draws on post-foundational discourse theory (Marttila 2016; Jason Glynos and David Howarth 2007) and linguistic pragmatics (Verschueren 2011). He shows that Flemish culture war discourse is articulated with(in) controversies ranging from debates over subsidies for artistic and minority CSO’s, the ideological neutrality of higher education, or school strikes of Youth for Climate. The term expresses anxieties over a seemingly expanding range of identities norms, values, and practices called into question by ideological opponents. It signals a sense of dislocation and constitutes others as warmongers: ‘woke social justice warriors’ and ‘cultural marxists’ vs ‘far right’ and ‘conservative zelots’ (see Phelan 2019). In the case of right-wing culture war discourse, ‘left-wing’ CSO’s constitute one category of culprits. It chimes with Flemish conservative discourse advocating the ‘primacy of (party) politics’, which labels CSO’s as un-democratic partisans of minority interests (Oosterlynck e.a. 2020). Academics adopting the term also tend to worry about ‘excessive’ politicisation processes. They hold that in cultural warefare politics becomes a reflection of deeper cultural dispositions, beyond our ability to reason about them (see Hartman 2019; Hunter 1991). In contrast, the paper argues that far right culture war discourse is articulated with(in) political imaginaries undermining the concept and legitimacy of civil society.