NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

to the mass media, they may set or change the agenda of the public discourse and can also indirectly control access to the mind of the public at large. This obviously does not mean that elite opinions and ideologies are simply imposed, or otherwise passively adopted by the public. What it means is that their discursive resources are such that they are better able than other social groups to influence interpretations and social beliefs, and to marginalise or suppress the alternatives that are against their interests. Consequently, the public receives only the subjective interpretation of reality summarised in a particular text or statement, while its access to facts that would reveal the real interactions is usually very limited. In other words, the public reads and watches only what is published and easily accessible. 82 This fact goes hand in hand with the interests of the representatives of the elite, who use various channels in order to transfer their interpretation of reality and attitudes towards particular issues and events to the public. The discourses based on a strict distinction between “we” and “others”, or the “in-group” and “out-group”, are generally known as discourses of difference. 83 The strategies of the definition and construction of these groups, and the consequent distinction between particular groups, is made on the basis of a particular category or categories – among which nationality or ethnicity plays an important role. In the analysis of the political discourses present in Poland and Slovakia, the distinction between “we” and “others” is based on the exclusion of “others”. Therefore, my main focus will be on party programmes and press statements in which the representatives of the political elite openly use ethnic prejudices, sentiments and animosity towards “others”. Since the elite often do not verbalise their ethnocentric positions directly, various forms of positive self-presentation, nationalist self-glorification, and indirect forms of derogation or defensive self-justification will also be examined. This applies to the field of economic nationalism as well. While an essential function of the “we discourse” is the denial of personal responsibility and its displacement onto the group as a whole, and blatant than elite racism. Nonetheless, many of the beliefs, prejudiced attitudes and ideologies of popular racism are derived from interpretations of the elite discourse such as media messages, textbooks, corporate discourse and, especially, political discourse. See T. van Dijk, “Political Discourse and Racism: Describing Others in Western parliaments”, S. H. Riggins (ed.) The Language and Politics of Exclusion. Others in Discourse . (Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), p. 32. 82 Ibid. 83 See, for instance, S. Hall Ideologie, Kultur, Medien: Neue Rechte, Rassismus . (Hamburg: Argument, 1989), op cit. In R. Wodak, “The genesis of racist discourse in Austria since 1989”, C. R. Caldas-Coulthard, M. Coulthard (eds.) Texts and Practices. Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 113.

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