Discussion about right-wing narratives and appeals to LGBTQI+ people in Europe have been primarily related to ‘homonationalism’ (Puar, 2007) and ‘Pinkwashing’. Further, traditional understandings of the relation between LGBTQI+ people and the radical right make the well-evidenced claim that the latter discriminates strongly against the former. However, this paper argues that certain aspects of the far-right across Europe have begun to make direct appeals to gay, white men in particular. These narratives seek to question a ‘natural alliance’ between LGBTQI+ people and the left, positing an LGBTQI+ specific variant of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that EU and national elites are conspiring to repopulate Europe and impose Sharia Law. This violent, conspiratorial narrative represents (so its adherents claim) an existential threat to the lives of gay people, and the narrative has achieved growing traction in Western Europe. However, while the radical right in Western Europe attempts to appeal to LGBTQI+ people by demonising Islam, an Islamophobic far-right in Eastern Europe does not replicate this phenomenon.

We argue that the weaponisation of LGBQTI+ rights through a tailored “Great Replacement” narrative encourages not only tacit support for the radical right, but active participation in perceived struggles against Islam. This has significant regional variations across wider Europe, and demographic variations between protective narratives tailored towards LGB individuals, and exclusionary narratives which ostracise trans and queer individuals, and LGBTQI+ Muslims. We conclude that this is a phenomenon relatively early in development but growing in traction, and warrants close scrutiny by academics and policymakers.

Populist leaders claim to be the true voices of the people, and where better to hear those voices than on the streets, during instances of popular mobilisation? In this article, I combine protest event analysis and critical frame analysis to identify the main populist frames used in protest events in Portugal and Spain from the beginning of the 21st century (2000-2020). I uncover how populism frames (such as the opposition between the good vs. the bad citizens, the instrumentalisation of fundamental freedoms or the defence of the real citizenry) began being employed by mainstream political parties well before the emergence and electoral growth of populist parties, and prior to the Great Recession and anti-austerity protest movement – progressively gaining strength in Spain, but still noticeable in Portugal. I explore how those frames evolved between 2000 and 2020, including their appropriation by populist forces, to demonstrate their effect on depoliticisation and delegitimization of what they frame as “bad protest” and “bad protesters” (aka bad people), and the reinforcement of their own message and its legitimacy. I also demonstrate how this discourse acts as a securitising move, ultimately framing “bad protest” as a security problem that needs to be restrained – or even eliminated – from the public sphere.

Most research on politicisation of European integration (EU politicisation) deals with politicisation in Western, Northern and Southern European countries and often leaves out countries in Central and Eastern Europe, perhaps logically as countries from Western, Northern, and Southern Europe are members of the EU for much longer. It is also common approach, albeit certainly not an exclusive one, to focus on EU politicisation by political party actors as it happens in the news media, usually newspapers, in the periods leading to national parliamentary or EP elections. This paper aims to complement the rich body of research on EU politicisation by focusing on two Central and Eastern Europe countries – Czechia and Slovakia – as well as by examining politicisation of European integration as it happens within a direct, unmediated communication channel: politicians Twitter accounts. We cover the period of between 2014 and 2019 in which Twitter has already become an important source of communication for politicians in the region. More specifically, we examine EU politicisation at Twitter accounts of the leaders of the relevant political parties in both countries. Based on a quantitative content and regression analysis, we focus not only on the descriptive trends in EU politicisation but also on its covariates and the location of EU issues in the political space and conflict structure in the two countries. Overall, the results indicate increasing politicisation particularly during the heightened period of refugee crisis as well as non-negligible embedding of politicisation of European integration in existing conflict dimensions, particularly the TAN-GAL and European integration one.

We are presently navigating an era marked by a global polycrisis, a term defined as the entanglement of crises in multiple global systems, significantly diminishing humanity's prospects (Lawrence et al., 2022, p.2). This concept underscores our current challenge of confronting numerous interconnected crises across various fronts simultaneously. These challenges include global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, global food security, climate change, environmental concerns, economic disparities, financial instability, political polarization, and threats to international security. These issues, extensively communicated and amplified through both traditional and modern media, evoke emotional responses from the public, fueling various political movements grounded in the politics of fear (Wodak, 2015). Within the realm of populism, crises denote critical and disruptive junctures marked by the emergence and widespread adoption of populist ideologies and movements. Populist leaders often exploit crises as a potent tool to assert their influence, especially during election campaigns. A prime illustration of this occurred with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, as evident in Marine Le Pen's Twitter communication during the 2022 French presidential election campaign. Our assumption is that Le Pen strategically employed the war to propagate crisis-related discourse in the first months of the full-scale invasion. She adopted various strategies for this purpose, exhibiting dynamic shifts in their usage. Notably, Le Pen adjusted her strategies based on whether her message targeted a national or international audience. This study aims to explore how Marine Le Pen, as a populist actor, employed crisis discourse through her Twitter account. The research adopts the theory and methodology of critical discourse analysis, focusing on five discursive strategies outlined by Ruth Wodak. By applying elements of critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes Le Pen's discursive strategies to identify and understand the dynamics and shifts in her approach. The findings reveal that, in her Twitter communication, Le Pen utilized the Russo-Ukrainian War as a crisis discourse, employing blame games and people-centric tendencies during the 2022 French presidential election campaign. In terms of discursive strategies, nomination, predication, and argumentation were the most frequently employed by Le Pen. These strategies were contextualized within the specific target audience she addressed – whether French, European, or international – and were adjusted accordingly.

The seemingly unending state of polycrisis entails the constant (re-)negotiation of the aims and nature of the EU, which to a significant extent occurs through the (de-)politicization of such crises and related policy responses. This paper considers (de-)politicization, which combines polarization, salience and mobilization, or a lack thereof, surrounding challenges faced by the EU and its policy responses, in the context of the ongoing processes of delegitimation and relegitimation of the European Union. In particular, this study asks why different kinds of actors engage in politicizing and depoliticizing strategies; it examines how these distinct strategies fit into the unfinished process of legitimation of the EU and considers whether they could play a role shaping the ever shifting confines and trajectory of the European project; finally, it questions the ways different kinds of ‘crises’ and policy areas inform the strategic choices of EU actors vis-à-vis domestic ones, thereby uncovering possible underlying mechanisms to these dynamics. For instance, bottom-up expectations towards the EU can shift from the rejection of the role it plays in a certain policy area to outrage at the inaction or lack of competence it displays on other issues. EU actors like the European Commission, may seek to highlight the role it should play on certain matters, while underplaying its contested competences over other domains. The paper tackles these questions by examining the (de-)politicizing discourse strategies enacted by different types of actors, on trade policy, migration policy, counterterrorism and economic and monetary policy, offering a broad perspective on the different kinds of actors involved and their strategies. Within a polity where formal channels of accountability are somewhat indirect and often perceived as insufficient, (de-)politicization strategies, especially in the form of political communication, become crucial in challenging or bolstering the EU’s legitimacy. This study, therefore, conceptualizes what an act of (de-)politicization in the public sphere looks like, shows how this can be detected empirically through a claim-level (de-)politicization index – the first of its kind in the field – , finally reflecting on how it may be linked to (de-)legitimizing processes. This approach is applied to a database of policy evaluations (claims), in the media of six Member States (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark). The aim is to spark further research into avenues which theoretically and empirically embed the long observed politicization and depoliticization of EU policies into our understanding of the EU as a polity in flux.