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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 23:4 (2024) ► pp.544–564

Doing gender at the far right

A study of the articulations of nationalism and populism in Vlaams Belang's gender discourses

ORCID logo | University of Liège | Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Debates over the difference between populism and nationalism have been at the forefront of political research on the far right in recent years. This paper aims to provide an empirical support for the claim that nationalism and populism are two distinct phenomena by analysing the articulations of both discourses in Vlaams Belang gender politics. In this perspective, this paper starts by presenting Benjamin De Cleen and Yannis Stavrakakis’s discursive-theoretical distinction of populism and nationalism (De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017, 2020), before to introduce the literature on far right gender politics. The contribution then analyses Vlaams Belang's gender discourses by mobilizing this theoretical framework in order to show how this distinction can help us identifying the different dimensions underlying contemporary far right gender discourses. The article concludes by suggesting new avenues for a better understanding of the various discursive strands composing far right politics.

Keywords: Far right, Vlaams Belang, Articulations, Nationalism, Populism, Gender
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Populism and nationalism in far right discourses
  • 3.Articulations of gender, nationalism and populism in far right discourses
  • 4.Methodological framework
  • 5.Femonationalism and anti-woke populism in Vlaams Belang discourses
    • 5.1Vlaams Belang’s femonationalist discourses
    • 5.2Anti-woke populism
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 28 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22163.gus
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