Oldal 128 [128]
OCR
126 | Beata Kovacs In his book Creating Fear, David Altheide (2002) argues that fear has played a prominent role in shaping public opinion lately. He does not primarily write about criminal threats when he claims that the discourse of fear has become prevalent. Fear is an omnipotent element of shaping identities and participating in social life nowadays. The media offers millions of stories that we can identify with, and the common component of these stories is often the sense of fear. Fear provides an explanation and solution, it is an important part of social control, and we can become part of the community by being afraid of what others are. The role of fear in identity formation can be better understood through the phenomenon of populism. In their article, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris examined the popularity of right-wing populist parties. The authors see the success of these parties in the economic and cultural uncertainties. According to them, material risks have come to the fore again, making individuals feel vulnerable due to the precarious labour market situation and growing social inequalities. Class-based politics has disappeared and instead of problematising economic issues, the focus has been on identity politics. Economic uncertainties combined with the erosion of perceived traditional values provide fertile ground for the advancement of right-wing populist parties (Inglehart and Norris 2016). A very similar argumentation can be found in Edgar Grande’s and Hanspeter Kriesi’s thesis of losers of globalisation (2012). According to this theory, the increased economic competition, cultural diversity, political integration, and the process of globalisation have created their winners and losers. It is important how globalisation has affected the sense of danger and the subjective experience of different types of grievances. The losers are simultaneously feeling economic insecurity, a threat from groups with different cultural backgrounds, and the loss of national autonomy. The support for populist parties is high, especially among those who have been left behind: those who are insecure about their identities, and often about their entire lives; who experience alienation and disintegration in their social relations; and those who feel frustrated and distrustful about politics and democracy. Left-wing populist parties usually blame neoliberal ideologies and various supranational institutions (International Monetary Fund, European Union) that they support policies which increase injustice, inequality, and insecurity. This process evokes the sense of anger and outrage in individuals, which rest primarily on moral ground. In contrast, the right mostly blames refugees, immigrants, the unemployed, and ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. They also bring to the surface emotions that are based on the rejection of immoral and inappropriate behaviour, but these emotions are fuelled by repressed shame, as the targets in this case are the ‘uncertain self the enemies of the questioned identity (Salmela and Von Scheve 2017; 2018). For example, during the economic crisis, the Greek Golden Dawn blamed the corrupt political elite, immigrants, and the phenomenon of
