Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The radical democratic theorist Chantal Mouffe has long criticized the moralization of politics in its neoliberalized Third Way form. The argument informs her analysis of the rise of the far right, which she suggests has partly been enabled by moralizing antagonisms that inhibit a culture of agonistic political contestation. This paper uses Mouffe to think about the current condition of mediatized public discourse, extending her critique of moralized politics to a wider set of targets. I illuminate the argument through an analysis of a BBC Newsnight report that thematizes the ‘toxic’ nature of public debate about the science of COVID-19. I show how the report internalizes sedimented ‘culture war’ discourses about the polarized nature of today’s public culture and, in the process, offers oblique insights into how far-right discourses are normalized. I end by considering some of the limitations of Mouffe’s work as a resource for thinking about how to counteract the far right.

Keywords

BBC COVID science culture wars far-right normalization media morality Mouffe neoliberalism sedimented antagonisms the political

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aytac

(2021) On the limits of the political: The problem of overly permissive pluralism in Mouffe’s agonism. Constellations 28(3): 417–431.

BBC Newsnight (2020) The science of Covid: Who’s right and who’s wrong? BBC Newsnight. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_CjRHBe8I (accessed 6 October 2021).

Bouvier

(2020) Racist call-outs and cancel culture on Twitter: The limitations of the platform’s ability to define issues of social justice. Discourse Context & Media 38: 1–11. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100431

Brown

(2019) In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Callison

Manfredi

(2019) Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

Carpentier

De Cleen

(2007) Bringing discourse theory into media studies: The applicability of discourse theoretical analysis (DTA) for the study of media practises and discourses. Journal of Language and Politics 6(2): 265–293.

Dahlberg

(2014) The Habermasian public sphere and exclusion: An engagement with poststructuralist-influenced critics. Communication Theory 24(1): 21–41.

Davey Smith

Blastland

Munafò

(2020) Covid-19’s known unknowns. BMJ 371: m3979.

Devenney

(2020) Towards an Improper Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

10.

Felski

(2015) The Limits of Critique. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

11.

Finlayson

(2022) YouTube and political ideologies: technology, populism and rhetorical form. Political Studies 70(1): 62–80.

12.

Flowerdew

(2017) Critical discourse studies and context. In: Richardson

Flowerdew

(eds) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. London: Routledge, pp.165–178.

13.

Freeden

(2021) Discourse, concepts, ideologies: Pausing for thought. Journal of Language and Politics 20(1): 47–61.

14.

Gilbert

(2020) Corbyn was intensely moral, but never a working class hero, openDemocracy. Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/corbyn-was-intensely-moral-never-working-class-hero/ (accessed 6 October 2021).

15.

Glynos

Howarth

(2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. London: Routledge.

16.

Hall

Critcher

Jefferson

, et al. (2013) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

17.

Hedges

(2021) The contradictions of ‘cancel culture’: Where elite liberalism goes to die, Salon. Available at: https://www.salon.com/2021/02/18/the-contradictions-of-cancel-culture-where-elite-liberalism-goes-to-die/ (accessed 6 October 2021).

18.

Hlavajova

(2020) Foreword. In: Hlavajova

Lütticken

(eds) Deserting from the Culture Wars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.9–21.

19.

Hunter

(1991) Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America. Memphis, Tenn: Basic Books.

20.

Jaworski

Coupland

Galasinski

(2004) Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives, Metalanguage. The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton.

21.

Kreiss

McGregor

(2021) A review and provocation: On polarization and platforms. Paper presented to the 2021 American Political Science Association conference, September 30–October 3, Seattle.

22.

Krzyżanowski

(2020) Normalization and the discursive construction of “new” norms and “new” normality: Discourse in the paradoxes of populism and neoliberalism. Social Semiotics 30(4): 431–448.

23.

Krzyżanowski

Ledin

(2017) Uncivility on the web: Populism in/and the borderline discourses of exclusion. Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 566–581.

24.

Laclau

Mouffe

(2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (2nd ed). London: Verso.

25.

Latour

(2004) Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry 30(2): 225–248.

26.

Marchart

(2018) Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology After Laclau. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

27.

Mills

(2020) The BBC: Myth of a Public Service. London: Verso.

28.

Moi

(2017) “Nothing is hidden”: From confusion to clarity; or, Wittgenstein on critique. In: Anker

Felski

(eds) Critique and post-Critique. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp.31–49.

29.

Mondon

Winter

(2020) Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream. London: Verso.

30.

Morrison

(2018) Rescuing politics from liberalism: Butler and Mouffe on affectivity and the place of ethics. Philosophy & Social Criticism 44(5): 528–549.

31.

Mouffe

(2005a) On the Political. London: Routledge.

32.

Mouffe

(2005b) The “end of politics” and the challenge of right-wing populism. In: Panizza

(ed.) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London: Verso, pp.72–98.

33.

Mouffe

(2018) For a Left Populism. London: Verso.

34.

Mudde

(2019) The Far Right Today. Cambridge: Polity.

35.

Nguyen

(2021a) How twitter gamifies communication. In: Lackey

(ed.) Applied Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.410–436.

36.

Nguyen

(2021b) Polarization or Propaganda? Boston Review. Available at: https://bostonreview.net/articles/polarization-or-propaganda/ (accessed 20 January 2022).

37.

Peters

(2005) Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

38.

Phelan

(2014) Neoliberalism, Media and the Political. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

39.

Phelan

(2019) Neoliberalism, the far right, and the disparaging of “social justice warriors”. Communication Culture & Critique 12(4): 455–475.

40.

Phillips

(2018) The oxygen of amplification: Better practices for reporting on extremists, antagonists, and manipulators. Available at: https://datasociety.net/library/oxygen-of-amplification/ (accessed 7 October 2021).

41.

Reilly

(2016) Read Hillary Clinton’s ‘Basket of Deplorables’ remarks on Trump supporters. Time. Available at: https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/ (accessed 7 October 2021).

42.

Rueb

Taylor

(2020) Obama on call-out culture: ‘That’s not activism’. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html (accessed 7 October 2021).

43.

Selvanathan

Crimston

(2020) Polarisation. In: Jetten

, et al (eds) Together Apart: The Psychology of COVID-19. London: SAGE, pp.120–124.

44.

Standring

Donoghue

(2022) Moral critique in an age of multiple crises: Towards transformative change. In: Regelmann

Spaeth

(eds) The Crisis and Future of Democracy. Brussels: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Europe, pp.80–110.

45.

Vukovic

(2014) Strong epistemic modality in parliamentary discourse. Open Linguistics 1(1): 37–52.

46.

Wodak

(2019) The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse, 2nd edn. London: SAGE.

Friends,enemies,and agonists: Politics,morality and media in the COVID-19 conjuncture

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References