Nationalism and Populism in Radical Right Discourses in Italy and Germany

Populism is, besides nationalism, one of the common components of today’s radical right politics. In fact, populism and nationalism are often conflated when assessing radical right identity formation, ideology and discourses. This article sheds light on the relationship between nationalism and populism by empirically investigating the presence and forms of populist (people vs. elites) and nationalist (ethno-national people vs. others) frames in the discourse of radical right parties and movements in Italy and Germany. By applying a frame analysis to written documents (election flyers, party programmes, newspapers) produced between 2013 and 2016, as well as current website material (press releases, newsletters, blogs) of selected radical right organisations, this article examines how nationalism and populism interact, overlap and potentially clash. We look at how populist and nationalist frames structure the radical right’s definition of “us” and “them” and its diagnoses, prognoses and motivations for action. We find that radical right-wing forces increasingly combine populist with nationalist frames, but the forms of populism on the radical right depend on the national political context and on the type of organisation—for parties, populism has become a central feature of their discourse; social movements exhibit only a peripheral conceptualisation of populism.