‘They became big in the shadow of the crisis’

Abstract

Greece has been in ‘crisis’ for six consecutive years now and during this time living standards have dropped considerably for the majority of the population, strict austerity measures have been implemented and unemployment has reached a record figure of 27.8% (with a Eurozone average of 12%). At the same time, a ‘success story’ is prominent in dominant discourses where Greece is portrayed to have achieved a primary budget surplus and according to which the ‘worst has passed’. The dire consequences of austerity, the political polarisation of Greek society and the rise of the far-right party Golden Dawn (GD), however, indicate a much less positive picture. In this context, the article aims to problematise the complex nexus of relationships between the financial crisis and the re-emergence of the extreme right-wing party, GD. The discussion draws on an analysis of 1497 postings from the online website of the British newspaper, The Guardian. We focus on discourse strategies for attributing/resisting blame emerging from the analysis of the postings, but also as negotiated in two popular threads on the online discussion board. The article takes a critical stance and combines the discourse-historical approach with a micro analysis of the interaction. This allows us to pay special attention to the multiple layers of context and to combine the macro and the micro in the constructions of blame and sense making of the crisis. Analysis of the data shows that a range of actors is held responsible for the current situation, while the rise of GD is constructed both as a ‘product of’ and ‘movement against’ the crisis. We close the article with the implications of our study and areas for further research.

Keywords

Blaming/denying disagreement discourse-historical approach far right financial/Eurozone crisis Golden Dawn Greece interactional analysis postings

Introduction

The ongoing financial crisis in the Eurozone has been prominent in media and official national and global economic discourses since the mid- to late 2000s. Greece, which is the focus here, has been one of the European countries most badly hit by the markets. It came to the brink of default (2010), took severe austerity measures and agreed to widely unpopular structural reforms in receiving funds from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stay liquid. After six years of recession Greece seems, in 2013/14, to be on track, the government argues, to reach its fiscal targets, and the current coalition government has been constructing a ‘success story’ (e.g. Papachristou, 2013) both within and outside Greece (e.g. Bensasson, 2013; Chakrabortty, 2013). The current Prime Minister (Antonis Samaras) and MPs from the coalition government foreground the country’s achievement of a primary budget surplus in 2013 (a year ahead of the agreement with the country’s international lenders through EU/IMF officials), as well as their putting public finances ‘in order’ and taking a relative drop in government borrowing costs (Edwards and Agnew, 2013; as an example, Greece’s 10 year bonds’ yield fell below 10% – the lowest since 2010). In an attempt to challenge a powerful discourse launched around 2012 on Greece leaving the Eurozone (widely reported as ‘Grexit’), ‘Grecovery’ is now promoted by the government where ‘the Greek economy has turned the corner’ (Provopoulos, 2014). As Greece took over presidency of the EU on 1 January 2014, this ‘success story’ has been part of dominant discourses (e.g. the PM’s address at the European Parliament on 15 January).

This optimism, however, is in sharp contrast with actual living conditions in the country. The fiscal austerity programme has led to mass unemployment (over 28% and youth unemployment at over 59% according to Eurostat) and widespread poverty, with 21.4% of the population being officially reported to be ‘at risk of poverty’ (ELSTAT (Hellenic Statistical Authority), 2013). Pessimism about the future is widespread (Manchin, 2013), with some surveys claiming that almost 38% of the population expects living conditions to deteriorate in the future (see Matsaganis, 2011 on the welfare state). The decline in both physical and mental health has already been reported on in relevant research (Economou et al., 2013) and suicide rates have more than doubled in recent years. ELSTAT and the non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Klimaka’ (ELSTAT (Hellenic Statistical Authority), 2013) report a continuous increase in recorded suicides in 2011, being up by 26.52% compared to 2010. In this context, the re-emergence of the far right in the face of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (GD) and the spread of extreme right-wing, xenophobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric that capitalises on anger and fear for the future in a society which attempts to make sense of a crisis that has deeply changed the status quo, show that ‘all is not well’ in the Greek success story.

The re/emergence of GD has ‘shocked’ the public, as widely reported in national and international press, and its relationship with the financial crisis has become prominent in both media representations and everyday discourses. GD’s soaring support has been constructed by many as a way chosen by voters to express disagreement with the government’s decisions and to project ‘blame’ onto the political system as a whole. Thus, some media interpret the success of GD mainly as protest while other sources regard GD as a fascist party that has resurfaced and is ‘here to stay’. Despite acts of violence¹ where marginalised groups were targeted (see the next section ‘The re-emergence of the extreme right in Greece’), GD’s pointing finger at the whole political system and foregrounding of the loss of face and sovereignty have been quite successful in making an ultra-nationalistic rhetoric sound ‘harmless’ to a number of voters. Following the murder of an anti-fascist Greek musician, Pavlos Fyssas (18 September 2013), however, there has been a rapid change in GD’s popularity, with mainstream media reporting a national outcry (Lowen, 2013). Immediate national and international media reaction scandalised this assassination, GD leaders were arrested and state funding for the party was suspended following the Greek parliament’s decision. More recently (November 2013), two more people, reported to be members of GD (Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis), have been shot dead. The investigation is ongoing at the time of writing, but allegations of links between the two incidents have been widely reported in the press (e.g. Strange, 2013).

In the context of this deep socio-political polarisation, the ‘financial crisis’, in different guises, as enacted and represented in the talk of the interactants, is invoked and related to a sense-making mechanism that depends on the respective positioning of the individual. Different groups are constructed by different people as responsible for the country’s economic troubles and the rise of extreme formations; this provides a mechanism for explaining the ‘political crisis’ in general and the GD phenomenon in particular. Crisis talk and blame attributions are, evidently, directly related. In an attempt to understand and solve what has gone wrong, but also in the process of justifying in/actions, individuals and organisations, depending on their role and the context in which the discourses are articulated, groups of people play the ‘blaming game’ where the finger is pointed at those who are constructed to be at the heart of the problem. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to unpack this recent ‘blame game’, that is, the attempt to construct scapegoats to explain the perceived reasons for the rise of GD and its enacted and situated relationship with the financial crises.

Through the analysis of 1497 postings from the online website of the British newspaper The Guardian, this article accesses everyday discourses and aims to tap into the complexity of public life in mediated societies. We take a critical stance, combining a focus on analysis of the interaction and the discourse-historical approach, which allows us to pay special attention to the multiple layers of context (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2009; Wodak, 2011, 2014). Our aim here is to combine the macro and the micro and to analyse constructions of blame and sense making of the crisis. We draw on the broader Greek context, the rise of GD and the particular incident of the murder of Pavlos Fyssas. We combine an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective on the discursive construction of crisis, crisis narratives and blaming devices with analysis of the specific genre of online postings and unique expressions of meaning making. We close the article with the implications of our findings and directions for future research.

The re-emergence of the extreme right in Greece

The rise of the far right in Greece and specifically the phenomenon of GD are under-researched (Ellinas, 2013), and scholarship in the area is overdue. The unprecedented electoral results of 2012 and the dramatic change in public opinion put the extremist party in the epicentre of academic, political and everyday discourses. GD reached 6.92% (from 0.29% in 2009) and 18 seats in the Greek parliament in 2012. Although, for many, GD came ‘out of thin air’, the party and its current leader (Nikos Michaloliakos) have a long history in the Greek political scene.

GD needs to be placed in the context of Greek modern history, and events since the military coup of April 1967 (1967–1974, also known as the Regime of the Colonels or the Greek junta) are relevant to its profile and growth. During the military junta under the dictator George Papadopoulos, a number of far-right groups (e.g. ‘Security Battalions’ – Tάγματα Aσφαλϵίας/Tάγματα Eυζώνων) which had been on the fringes since the end of the civil war (1946–1949) re-emerged (Kostopoulos, 2005). Similarly, members of other formations (e.g. the Units of Raiding Squads – MAΔ: Mονάδϵς Aποσπασμάτων Διώξϵως – and the Units for Rural Security – MAY: Mονάδϵς Aσφαλϵίας Yπαίθρου) were part of the bloodline of extreme-right reformation and the continuation of the chain. It is this period from 1967 onwards that constitutes the background for current far-right parties and formations. Although a detailed analysis goes beyond the aim of this article, their ideology can be traced back to Metaxas’s ‘4th August’ regime (1936–1941) and the ideology and structure of the National Organisation of Youth (EON) which Metaxas established (see Petrakis, 2011). When Greece entered the Second World War (on 28 October 1940), EON was dissolved, but often its members collaborated with Nazi occupiers (see e.g. Apostolou, 2000). Metaxas’s emphasis on supreme national ideals, and abstract notions such as ‘family’ and ‘religion’ as well as ‘hard work’ for a new Greece (Sarandis, 1993), remain clearly visible in the discourse of Greek far-right groups (see e.g. the ‘4th August’ party who directly draw on Metaxas’s regime).

Upon the restoration of democracy in 1974, the junta leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment. The imprisoned Papadopoulos led a far-right group, the National Political Union (EPEN), which aimed at recruiting and developing the future ‘far-right’ leaders of Greece (see Ellinas, 2013). According to reports (e.g. Bistis, 2013), Michaloliakos met Papadopoulos in prison when he was serving his own sentence and then took a position in EPEN’s youth division (Galiatsatos, 2013). He subsequently left EPEN for GD. GD, or rather ‘People’s Association – Golden Dawn’ (Λαικός Σύνδϵσμος – Xρυσή Aυγή) as the party’s official name, was founded by Michaloliakos in 1983. It started as a nationalist-socialist magazine (in December 1980) and then turned into a political party. Although GD remained peripheral (e.g. 0.07% in the 1996 election), it joined forces with other far-right formations over the years and strengthened its base. With a strong anti-immigration discourse (and an agenda focused on expelling immigrants from Athens), GD took part in the local elections in 2010 and, with an unexpected 5.29%, Michaloliakos took a seat on the city council. The party reached a peak in the 2012 national elections. GD-dominant discourses, aligned with that of other extreme far-right parties in Europe (see Wodak et al., 2013), target immigrants and supporters of the broadly defined ‘left’. GD members have been involved in a number of attacks against immigrants and non-immigrants (e.g. a student was severely injured in 1997). Before the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, however, acts of violence were not met with strong resistance from the police and other official institutions, who often kept silent or even collaborated with GD, as reported in the national and international press (e.g. ekathimerini, 2013; Margaronis, 2012). In this context, the article unpacks everyday discourses before and after the scandalisation of the murder and the foregrounding of GD’s past in the national and international media. Our aim is to explore meaning-making mechanisms in relation to GD’s rise in the Greek socio-political sphere.

How ‘blame’ works: Blaming and framing in crisis

Crises are characterised by uncertainty regarding the nature and potential consequences of the perceived threat(s). This is what motivates various groups and individuals (e.g. governments, the mass media, citizens) to engage in ‘meaning making’ by constructing stories and images that may reduce or increase uncertainty and conflict generated by crises. Boin et al. (2005) observe that political leaders are inclined to regard such situations as battles for their credibility:

Policy makers want to be seen to be in control of the crisis. This is quite a challenge because if they really were in control, there would presumably be no crisis. Yet they need to get across the idea that ‘yes, it is tough, but we are hanging in there, and will be able to deal with the problem’. (p. 78)

Importantly, public narratives about crises are intimately related to perceptions of history and shared identities. Stra°th and Wodak (2009) point out that major societal crises like revolutions and wars are seen as ‘condensed events with symbolic or iconic value’ and construed as ‘turning points in history’ (p. 16). Such meta-narratives essentially involve ‘contentious value mobilisation’ (right/wrong, good/bad, friend/enemy) and may in turn provide discursive foundations for building new (national) identities. We assume that the recently unfolding ‘Greek success story’ consists precisely in an attempt to provide a new meta-narrative of having successfully coped with the crisis. Furthermore, we also propose that understanding how people discursively apportion and deny blame is central to interpreting crises.

Hay (1996) defines crises as processes of transformation that are ‘constituted in and through narrative’ about ‘an object … in need of decisive intervention, and a … project (and hence a subject) through which that decisive intervention can be made’ (p. 254).

Crises are representations and hence ‘constructions’ of failure. A given constellation of contradictions and failures within the institutions of the state can sustain a multiplicity of conflicting narratives of crisis. Such narratives compete in terms of their ability to find resonance with individuals’ and groups’ direct, lived experiences, and not in terms of their ‘scientific’ adequacy as explanations for the condition they diagnose. (Hay, 1996: 255)

Hay proposes that the discursive construction of crisis should be seen as a process of abstraction and meta-narration through which various stories about (complexly related or independent) events and statistics are linked together as ‘symptoms’ of a crisis. Hence, an established crisis frame biases people to include more (possibly unrelated) phenomena in this more general story, as ‘the crisis diagnosis is confirmed in each new “symptom” which can be assimilated within this meta-narrative’ (Hay, 1996: 268). Importantly, in the process of such abstraction, attributions of blame related to causality and agency of specific events may be backgrounded or omitted.

Hood (2011) conceptualises blaming as a social process in terms of two components, three dimensions and two sets of actors. Blaming involves, on the one hand, ‘something … seen as being worse for some person or group than it could have been if matters had been handled differently’, and on the other hand, ‘harm was avoidable because it was caused by acts of omission or commission by some identifiable individual or organisation or possibly some more abstract institution such as “capitalism” or “patriarchy”’ (Hood, 2011: 6). This is a point we will discuss later, in light of the data.

The components of blame are (1) perceived avoidable harm or loss in time, and (2) perceived responsibility or agency in time. Blame works in three dimensions: loss, agency and time. Obviously, blaming involves at least two sets of actors: blame makers and blame takers. Blame may lead to a variety of consequences for a blame taker, ranging ‘from mild social embarrassment to deep shame or extreme legal sanctions involving loss of life or liberty’ (Hood, 2011: 7). Interestingly, such important insights have not been integrated to date with detailed empirical analysis from a linguistic perspective.

Wodak (2006a) provides a concise overview of linguistic approaches to blaming and its frequently complementary speech act – denying. Blaming as a constitutive feature of conflict talk can be analysed using a variety of approaches suitable to the particular genre and/or context. These include, for instance, speech act theory, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, argumentation analysis and rhetoric. Blaming typically takes the form of a speech act of ‘accusation’. In interaction, accusations are often followed by counter-accusations and enacted according to interactants’ perceptions of their own face needs and those of their interlocutors. Mitigation and (in)directness become directly relevant in how blaming and accusation are conversationally managed (see e.g. Holmes and Stubbe, 2003) and in the ways in which conflict talk is avoided or inflicted (e.g. Pomerantz and Sanders, 2013). Conflict talk often contains argumentative moves which make use of topoi and fallacies (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992; Walton, 2008) to attribute blame to the opponent. These moves include, among others, argumentum ad hominem (pointing out a negative characteristic of the opponent), tu quoque (an appeal to the opponent’s hypocrisy) and victim–perpetrator reversal (blaming the victim). Further to this, discourse analysts have focused on discursive strategies employed in blaming, that is, macro-conversational discursive practices adopted by speakers/writers to achieve particular goals (e.g. political, social, psychological). In constructing and positioning the abstract ‘other’ in a negative light, language use can be conceptualised as comprising strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivation and intensification/mitigation (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009). From a micro-analytic perspective, these strategies are negotiated locally between interactants who need to manage avoiding and allocating blame without damaging their own moral and credible persona (e.g. Abell and Stokoe, 1999). Although recent work has addressed the way blaming and conflict are enacted in online environments (see e.g. ‘Theorising Disagreement, in Angouri and Locher, 2012), new spaces for political engagement emerge in cyberspace and further work is needed to explore online political discourse, particularly in relation to blaming and sense-making mechanisms, which is our focus here (Wright, 2012).

Context, method and data

The Guardian discussion board constitutes an asynchronous environment which is in the public domain; messages are archived and remain available online. It is an international space operating on the online Guardian website. Participants need to register, create an account and use the website under a chosen user name. Although the forum is open to any online user, it is evident that participants choose to relate to the imagined community of ‘The Guardian readers’² and are able to interact in English. By drawing on the non-Greek press, we were able to explore how ‘Greek reality’ becomes relevant to other localities (see also Vaara, 2014) and to the daily lives of people who self-identify as being of both Greek and non-Greek origin.

We analysed 1497 postings which constitute readers’ comments on two articles, published in The Guardian on 28 September 2012 and 18 September 2013, respectively, by Helena Smith (The Guardian’s correspondent in Greece). We chose them on the following grounds: (a) both articles attracted a large number of readers’ posted comments and reactions; (b) both made an explicit link between GD and the financial crisis; and (c) they were written precisely a year apart, before and after the murder of Pavlos Fissas, which marked the beginning of a series of actions by the state towards the leading figures of the party who, at the time of writing, have been convicted, in their majority, of criminal actions. In regard to the 2012 article, 241 user names participated in the online discussion between 28 September and 1 October. In relation to the 2013 one, 317 user names participated between 18 and 21 September. Most of the active engagement in interaction took place on the two days following the publication of each article, with 515 and 859 postings on the 2012 and 2013 articles respectively (see also Robinson, 2005). The data were coded following the principles of thematic analysis. The coding looked for the discursive construction of causality between the financial crisis and the rise of GD in the two articles, as well as the enactment of ideological framing in relation to GD itself.

While following the discourse-historical approach (DHA), we attempt to deconstruct latent ideologies and belief systems via the analysis of presupposed, implied and insinuated knowledge (Van Dijk, 1998). We adopt a social constructionist perspective and are interested in how online users co-construct ‘facts’ that explain the rise of GD and ways in which the description of events and key actors becomes a resource for allocating and denying blame and negotiating ‘excuse’. Analysis of the data draws on macro strategies used to frame blame and the linguistic enactment of projecting/denying accusations in the online context, as well as on the relevant features of disagreement and conflict talk. Although descriptive statistics are referred to, the study is qualitative in nature and interpretive. Below we expand on the DHA as applied in the context of this article and its relationship with our focus on the analysis of interaction.

The discourse historical approach

Three key features of the DHA – con/text, discourse and discursive strategies – are relevant to the analysis of our data.

The DHA focuses, first, on audio, spoken, visual and/or written texts as they relate to structured knowledge (discourses), are realised in specific genres and must be viewed in terms of their situatedness. Texts cannot be understood without considering different layers of context and a four-level model is proposed, including: the sociopolitical/historical context, the current context, a text-internal co-text, and intertextual and interdiscursive relations (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 40f). The first two are of particular significance as they allow for deconstructing interdiscursive and intertextual relations, presuppositions, implicatures and insinuations in the postings as arguments, topics and opinions are recontextualised from the newspaper articles. Second, the DHA views discourses as ‘context-dependent semiotic practices’, as well as ‘socially constituted and socially constitutive’, ‘related to a macro-topic’ and pluri-perspective, that is, linked to argumentation (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 89). Taking such a perspective, the internet forum can be understood as a site which draws on existing opinions and collective memories about Greek history, Greek identity and current discourses on immigration and the financial crisis in Greece, as well as mobilising and radicalising these discourses.

Third, positive-self and negative-other presentation is realised linguistically via discursive strategies (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 45–90). Here, we primarily focus on nomination (how events/objects/persons are referred to) and predication (what characteristics are attributed to them). A paradigmatic case might be the ‘naming’ of a protagonist or an institution metonymically (pars pro toto), such as Merkel for Germany; or as synechdoche (totum pro parte), such as the Greek government for all corrupt Greek elites. The strategy of perspectivisation realises the author’s involvement, for example via deixis, quotation marks, metaphors, etc.

Finally, argumentation strategies concern the justification and legitimation of specific claims. Within the DHA (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 74f), the notion of topos designates both formal and content-related ‘conclusion rule[s] that connect[s] the argument or arguments with the conclusion, the claim’. Here, the DHA draws on Wengeler’s and Kienpointer’s context-specific notion of topos, defined as semiotically manifested ‘figures of thought in approaching a political issue’ (Wengeler, 2003: 67). Kienpointer (quoted in Wengeler, 2003: 65), similarily, views topoi ‘as being typical for arguments by speakers of a speech-community or at least bigger groups of not especially trained speakers’. These conclusion rules are either sound or fallacious, enabling or preventing the more or less undistorted exchange of standpoints through particular ways of representing events, objects or persons (for this normative distinction, cf. Forchtner, 2011). In sum, the DHA focuses on ways in which power-dependent semiotic means are used to construct positive-self and negative-other presentations (US and THEM, the pro and contra about the crisis, the good people and the scapegoats).

The DHA provides a strong theoretical framework for linking the interactional work participants do within the broader socioeconomic and political context. Despite a number of approaches for the analysis of discourse, attempts at cross-disciplinary boundaries become more the norm than the exception and showcase the strengths of holistic approaches and mixed methodologies (Angouri, 2010) for the analysis of complex questions such as those addressed here. In our approach, we combine the DHA and a focus on linguistic enactment of the discourse strategies identified above. We are particularly interested in how participants handle the projection/allocation of accusations/justifications for their stances (and that of their interlocutors). In doing so, we draw on relevant research on online and off-line disagreement and conflict as enacted in interaction and attempt to link the interactional order to the broader socio-political context. Our theoretical approach will be discussed in more detail elsewhere, but we consider the data analysis an illustration of the affordances of the theoretical and methodological framework we are adopting.

In the following section, we discuss the ‘agents of blame’ as they emerged from the whole data set. We then turn to a more detailed exploration of two examples, from the most popular threads of our data set, to provide a ‘real feel’ for the online interaction.

Findings/discussion

Analysis of the postings shows that (a) a range of imagined groups and organisations are constructed as responsible for the rise of GD, and (b) a complex picture emerges in relation to GD and the financial crisis (we return to this point in light of the data). A brief map representing the key actors most frequently named in the user’s threads is provided in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Key actors emerging from the data.

This organisation of the data constitutes an analytic process as, evidently, the discourses are interrelated, and this will be reflected in the examples discussed in the following sections.

We open the discussion by foregrounding the relevant macro strategies for ‘doing’ blame in the data before turning to the discursive justification strategies in relation to one macro group: institutions including political institutions (e.g. governments) and financial institutions (e.g. the IMF/banks) and also other public bodies (e.g. the police).³

Macro strategies for doing blaming and denying

As discussed earlier, the macro strategies employed in blaming and denying (Benke and Wodak, 2003; Wodak, 2004, 2006b) are enacted linguistically in various ways, depending on the context. The strategies are realised as macro-conversational patterns or moves, often used to structure public debates on topics such as poverty, economic problems and the welfare state; on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism; and on sexism and the representation of rape (e.g. Heer et al., 2008; Maynard, 1998; Triandafyllidou et al., 2009). In this section, we briefly illustrate the most salient cases, relevant to the discussion of the data in the next two sections.

A. The first three strategies negate the context of a specific Greek crisis and the rise of the far right, in the face of GD, as a Greek-specific phenomenon: (1) the crisis is the same everywhere else (equation); all countries are the same (fallacious generalisation; tu quoque); or (2) a claim of ignorance combined with (contrasted with) a refusal to take a stance; and (3) the situation is frequently realised as a victim–perpetrator strategy. Individuals claim victimhood for themselves or for the entire country, that is, others are to blame. The following excerpts illustrate this. Evidently, the strategies we highlight are not used in isolation and they are also negotiated/resisted when users engage interaction (these points are discussed in further detail below). However, the macro strategies provide a useful frame for the discussion of the data that follows.

A.1.

I’m pretty indifferent about who to blame, I don’t think it serves a purpose. What is useful to note is that both the Greeks and the rest of the EU may be better served to look at an extremely long term recovery with very small repayments, otherwise you risk governmental collapse, neo-fascism and what have you that far outweighs any benefits of paying the debt off early (which it wouldn’t be if either of those two things happened).

A.2.

Ohhh nasty people, I don’t agree with, make them go away . . . The level of debate is edifying to say the least.

No one on here knows the facts, and there has been no trial. So ignorant lynch mob, stop shouting, and best to keep your psychotic revenge fantasies to yourselves.

A.3.

Angela Merkel deserves more credit here. The incredible damage done in Greece and elsewhere by the austerity cult of the last decade is almost beyond reckoning. Infrastructure shattered, millions of lives destroyed, public trust in ashes, terrible lacerating divisions opened up and exploited within increasingly fragile societies – all in support of what turns out to have been one of the most egregious economic Big Lies of all time. Poor suffering Greece has been as helpless as a lab rat in this awful experiment.

B. The next strategy lifts the discussion up to a more general level. Using the strategy of scientific rationalisation, some people (online users in our case) launch into extensive analyses of the current situation, of the intervention by other EU member states or the troika, or specific countries, often Germany. Postings make use of arguments embedded in topos of history, drawing on collective memories and equating the context of the Second World War and the German occupation with the current situation. Such narratives serve as justification for the re-emergence of the GD as a necessary consequence of (Greek) history and a predictable, thus justifiable, response to crisis management. The excerpt below clearly illustrates this:

B.1.

History is to repeat. Remember the Weimar Republic in Germany and the resulting rise of Nazism. The common reference have a name. Indebted countries without a hope, desparate and indignant citizens. Then the mistake was some termes of Versailles Treaty. Now is some termes of the Greek bailout austerity program imposed by Troika. Are they any lessons to be learned by democratic Europe?

C. The third macro strategy consists of ‘positive-self presentation’: the posting narrates stories which portray the user (and by extension a party/group supported by them) as having performed ‘good and praiseworthy deeds’, of helping those in need. In pro-GD posts, violence is often acknowledged, yet the postings maintain that the key actors have acted responsibly/morally and hence no blame can be attributed. This strategy can be further developed as (a) trying to understand what happened or (b) trying to justify and/or deny the existence of ‘problems’ triggered by the rise of the right-wing GD by:

(1) relativising the facts: people using this strategy enumerate similar problems of other nations or use clichés, such as ‘every crisis is horrible’

or by

(2) adopting further strategies seeking to provide a (pseudo-) rational causal explanation for the specific Greek context.

While (1) is characterised by the postings’ continuing, unmitigated and undisguised use of right-wing ideology, this second strategy, despite stemming from a right-wing ideology, acknowledges, however implicitly, that GD’s moral status is indeed questionable.

(3) In this cluster, we also encounter the ‘Not “we”, but “them”’ strategy, which attributes the violence to groups or political parties other than the one the individual user probably belongs to or identifies with – a typical fallacy of shifting blame.

(2) and (3) are common in the data and the following excerpts constitute useful illustrations:

C.1.

In times of extreme difficulty, people will seek solace where they can.

C.2.

If I was hungry, homeless and threatened by immigrant thugs I’d look to the Golden Dawn as well. [. . .] I do not deny that GD goes around attacking immigrants and I think it is disgusting. But, as the article states, they are just filling the void. For many years the state did nothing to curb illegal immigration and now, in a country of ~10 million we have more than 1.5M illegal immigrants. They have no jobs and they do not really want to be in Greece, as the country is only good enough as a passing point for them. I do see why they have to resort to violence just to survive, but opening the flood gates of immigration allows a lot of ‘undesirables‘ to come in, whose criminal record may be lengthy but remains unknown.

C.3.

It was the communists (or was it the anarchists) who burnt a pregnant Greek woman alive. Communists and anarchists are the ones who created this Golden Dawn monster. A plague on all their houses.

Finally, D simply denies the relationship between the user’s position and a condemnable act (in pro-GD postings, the user may deny agency in violent acts or a link with neo-Nazi organisations). For instance:

D (see also A.2.)

I am not quite sure what makes them Neo Nazi. And am amazed at how Nazi’s are still being mischaracterized as Far Right. With the exception of tough immigration policy most of the Nazi 25 pt platform is leftist from its banning unearned income to criminalization of war profits.

Ways in which these macro strategies are used in relation to one case emerging from the data are discussed next.

Whose fault is it and why?

Despite differences in the 2012 and 2013 data sets, abstract actors such as political institutions and particularly governments (Greek and non-Greek), as well as the EU and the IMF, remain high in frequency and take the lion’s share of blame attribution in both sets.

As illustrated here (underlining is used to indicate the focus of the discussion), the following three quotes reflect users’ common positionings in the 2012 data set:

(1)

The financial troubles are of your own corrupt governments’ making.

(2)

You can blame an economic migrant as much as you like but that will not stop the governments dismantling the rights and privileges we have come to expect in the West because they have run out of money.

(3)

How does the Greek state tolerate individuals who are not law enforcing agents or entities who take the law into their own hands.

Analysis of the data shows that allegations of corruption constitute a common topic for the users. Greek governments and politicians are constructed as being corrupt, which bears direct relevance to the country’s financial troubles and by extension to the rise of GD. Although the typical ideological framing of the postings distinguishes them as pro- or anti-GD, projecting blame onto ‘governments’ is constructed as a common position in both groups.

Greek governments are held responsible not only for action, but also for inaction by allowing GD to ‘fill in’ the space of the state (in 3). And while Greek governments/politicians are represented as abusing the country’s coffers, a broader group, ‘governments’, are also responsible as they affect living standards by attacking rights and privileges in an attempt to save money.

Similarly in 2013, ‘governments’ are once again constructed as responsible for the way GD is handled. While a ‘socialist’ face of GD, in helping victims of the crisis, is negotiated and seems to maintain consensus in the 2012 data, the violent face of the far right is actively enacted and negotiated in the 2013 data set. Hence, the definition and evaluation of GD change significantly.

(4)

I don’t condone violence but clearly the governments of Europe aren’t listening to their people any longer and real alternatives are popping up.

(5)

The parliament has transformed an independent country into a protectorate.

(6)

As a Greek I am wondering if Greeks (governments) will ever get anything right again? Banning Golden Yawn plays right into their hands. How can we then ever accuse them of being undemocratic? What if the killer had been a priest – would the government ban the church? Malakes. (Wankers)

Distancing strategies from violence become necessary for users to protect their moral persona and achieve positive self-presentation (cf. C and D earlier) – a prerequisite for claiming neutrality of their position. In example (4), this is also clearly shown by use of the disclaimer ‘but’ structure. This allows and prefaces the generalised statement that follows and contributes towards a (pseudo-)rational cause for the violence. In this case, governments of Europe, it is argued, are not listening to their people; and violence – it is implied – could be a ‘real alternative’, hence the party’s growth and popularity are explained.

As much as distancing is important, claiming belonging to national categories becomes a resource for enacting expertise and authority. In (6), the user indirectly positions self towards the party (re-named Golden Yawn) and attributes blame to the government’s actions through a rhetorical question, drawing an analogy between a neo-Nazi organisation and the church.

Pro-GD postings in 2013 reframe GD and attempt to distance the person who committed the act from the party (cf. C and D). This becomes important in creating a positive image for the in-group (as accepting murder cannot be justified). The relationship with GD as ‘freeing’ the country from financial tyranny, as in (5), and moving the blame back to the financial trouble becomes a strategy for explaining the rise of the party and even for constructing it in a positive light, despite the frame of the extreme violence. Hence a victim–perpetrator reversal is interactionally enacted. The government, as abstract actor once again, is blamed for the way things are being handled and blame for the growth of the GD party is directly attributed.

This is in line with the justification strategies enacted when other financial institutions are brought to the fore (e.g. from the 2012 (7) and 2013 (8) data sets):

(7)

The real problem that Greece is facing now is all these corrupt politicians and the blood-sucking EU and IMF asking for more cuts, in-debting the country and asking it to just sell more and more.

(8)

What has always characterized the far right is cowardice. They blame the weakest in society or those in too small a minority to be able to defend themselves. Where are their attacks on the corporations or on the bankers who caused this economic mess? Why are they so silent about them?

Truth claims are frequent in the data, as illustrated by the ‘real’ labelling in some of the examples discussed. The financial institutions named are associated with a drop in the country’s living conditions (7) and in/directly with GD’s acts and popularity. A ‘socialist’ face for GD as extending a helping hand to those suffering is again constructed in the data. The economic ‘mess’ becomes a context for both justifying GD and indirectly excusing acts of violence through processes of (pseudo-)rational argumentation. This is (more) actively resisted in 2013, where the murder moves the focus from the common-sense positioning of what is a so-called ‘unavoidable effect of the crisis’ to the extreme violence. The way violence is handled by those who are tasked with protecting society from abuse, namely the police, also emerges from the analysis.

The police are explicitly named in both data sets, though in 2013 16 threads are directly focused on debating the role of the police in relation to GD’s popularity. In the 2012 data set, the police are already constructed as aligned with GD, a position framed within the broader context of institutions and their (in)action. In a large range of scapegoats, encompassing the police, abstract ideologies such as neo-liberalism and specific prominent people who are metonymically positioned for their institutions or countries, such as Lagarde (the IMF) and Merkel (Germany), are juxtaposed in identifying the main agents of the situation. In this context, blame shifting becomes possible as a number of actors are foregrounded (cf. A.3. and C).

(9)

The Troika have been utterly arrogant and have offered the Greek people nothing but misery . . . with the promise of more misery. Screw Merkel, Lagarde et al and their error strewn thinking . . . they, together with the Greek police have opened the door to a great evil . . . read some history books you neo-liberal shitheads . . . a child of ten would have done better in your positions.

(10)

It seems the cops and golden dawn have formed a political alliance. The police have gone into politics. If the left come to power there must be a reckoning, and so the police go with the fascists.

This position is reinforced, and in 2013 the police are blamed both for failing to apply the law and for tolerating GD violence. They are constructed as not being properly regulated by the state and hence in power to ‘sanction’ the actions of any party in general and the extremist GD in particular.

(11)

Sounds like a large part of the problem is the police failing to do their job. In that case, a large number of them should lose their job.

(12)

I get the feeling that the Greek politicians aren’t putting a sufficient amount of pressure on the police. No wonder Golden Dawn becomes increasingly arrogant if the police seem to (implicitly?) sanction their thuggery.

An abstract yet explicit relationship between the agents of blame and GD emerges from the data. While there seems to be a cause and effect relationship whereby the financial crisis is represented as responsible for the rise of the far right, at the same time, in both the fervently and moderately pro-GD framed postings, GD’s attempts to ‘assist’ those affected by the crisis influence the party’s popularity. This positions GD as an agent against the crisis, aims to rationalise the party’s acts and attempts to distance it from morally condemnable actions. An illustration is provided in Figure 2. Although this is a simplification of a complex reality, it shows how online participants negotiate the growth of GD in the context of a deeply polarised society which does not trust the current political status quo and seems ready to believe in ‘prophets’ (see e.g. Lucardie, 2000 on the emergence of new parties).

Figure 2.

The GD/financial crisis nexus.

In the next section, we take a closer look at the micro-linguistic enactment of the debate.

The co-construction of GD

In the context of the complex picture briefly illustrated by the quotes above, this section aims to take a closer look at the discursive construction of GD’s profile. Two examples taken from popular threads of the two data sets are discussed here. We are only able to discuss a small number of the first postings in each thread, but we attempt to capture the dynamics of online interaction and the active enactment of the stances discussed so far.

The following postings constitute part of the most popular thread in the 2012 data set, as evidenced by the number of comments and ‘likes’. What is significant about this example is that one posting by a user⁴ has created a noticeable reaction and remains persistent as users keep referring back to it as the debate unfolds.

Extract 1 28/09 8:16 1187 ‘likes’ 1 Tomas Phillip – Golden Dawn should be praised for the constructive and important role they are playing in protecting Greeks during such desperate times as these. While the leftists burn banks, vandalise buildings, attack the police and denigrate Greece’s culture and history, Golden Dawn are actively seeking to improve people’s lives and providing protection and comfort when nobody else will. Such initiatives can only be admired. 2 3 4 5 6 09:05 1541 ‘likes’ 7 Cwhearty > Tomas Phillip – 8 No, it is ‘Leftists’ who have set up food co-ops, clothes banks, urban farms, mutual aid societies, homeless shelters and protection units for immigrants being murdered by Golden Dawn. 9 10 11 12 You sir, however (following all the little grubby Mosely’s that have gone before you, and like the pygmies they are vanishing down the drain of history), have decided to immediately support a fascist and racist organisation that murders people and burns their homes because they are either from somewhere else or have a different politics. 13 14 15 16 17 18 Your time will come when a fascist moment arrives in this country. You will then have a choice to make. You probably don’t have the courage to stand up in public for your beliefs, but if you do, I, and thousands of others, will be there in the street to meet you, and we won’t be fighting you with fucking words this time. 19 20 21 22 23 Good luck. 09:05 768 ‘likes’ 24 Thessaloniki2013 > Tomas Phillip – 25 You might admire them, but the hundreds of thousands of Greeks who lost their lives to defend their country against the Nazi invader are turning in their graves … But even today, most Greeks would rather starve than accept handouts from the neonazis, who have actually been chased away on more than one occasion when they tried to ‘show their solidarity’ by joining protest groups. Seeking to improve people’s lives? I wouldn’t say so, seeking to improve their image is more like it. Nevertheless, it’s so sad, for some of us it’s even sadder than our economic plight or losing face in Europe and the rest of the world. Our children turning their face away from democracy and from respecting all humans as equals, how can we live with this, which is the direct result of our past actions and choices? 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 09:20 416 ‘likes’ 36 Tomas Phillip > Thessaloniki2013 – 37 Thessaloniki I’m very sorry about the situation the Greek people now find themselves facing. It is truly tragic and although I am not Greek myself I admire the bravery Greeks have shown throughout their history. 38 39 40 41 In Golden Dawn I see manifestations of the powerful spirit that enabled Greeks to survive hundreds of years of brutal Ottoman occupation while retaining their culture, religion and pride. 42 43 44 45 How do you think the hundreds of thousands of Greeks who died during that occupation, who resisted Anatolian colonisation and forced conversions would feel about those Greeks who welcome mass immigration from the East? Immigration that threatens to destroy everything they sought to defend. I am quite sure that they would be horrified. 46 47 48 49 50 09:27 1335 ‘likes’ 51 Ritamargarita > Tomas Phillip – 52 How do you think the Greeks who died resisting the Nazis would feel about a Greek political party that openly idolizes Hitler? 53 54 How do you think the Greeks who left the country in economic desperation in the last two centuries, only to be treated as filthy immigrant scum in the wealthier lands they travelled to would feel about Greek fascists murdering immigrants in cold blood? 55 56 57 58 I’m descended from some of both, and their memory is part of why I loathe the Golden Dawn. 59 60 09:58 591 ‘likes’ 61 Thessaloniki2013 > Tomas Phillip – 62 Please do not even try to somehow connect my people’s resistance against losing their identity during the 400 years of Turkish rule with the ideology of this group of barbarians who caught us asleep and entered our parliament as a legitimate political party! Where you see manifestations of the powerful spirit that enabled Greeks to survive I see manifestations of extreme nationalism, and we all know where that leads. And if you think that their giving poor people a bag of potatoes in the morning makes it OK for the Golden Eggs (that’s what we call them here, from egg of the serpent, get it?) to go immigrant bashing and killing in the night, it’s a waste of my time to be talking to you because I – as a Greek who has lived in foreign countries as an immigrant for most of my life and who has been on the receiving end of xenophobia and racism – obviously think differently. Can Greece cope with the million or so immigrants (most of them without papers) currently on her soil? Obviously not. Is Golden Dawn the answer to this problem? Not according to my principles and beliefs. To tell you the truth, I’d rather live with immigrants than with rabid neonazis. 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 10:20 70 ‘likes’ 76 Apachewalks> Tomas Phillip – 77 How old are you? Read much history? 10:22 120 ‘likes’ 78 Stopmeifyoucan> Tomas Phillip 79 Yes, they should be admired for abusing and demonizing fellow human beings. They can help their fellow Greeks just as they are doing now (distributing clothes and food) without resorting to fascism and violence but apparently that is impossible for brain dead yahoos. 80 81 82

The epistemic position expressed by Tomas Phillip (lines 1–6) creates an immediate reaction and is challenged by other users of the forum. In line with other research (Neurauter-Kessels, 2011) on online news sites, heated disagreement is common. This is further aggravated when controversial topics are debated. Users draw on both the affordances of the medium and also on linguistic resources to challenge their interlocutors’ arguments. Regarding the former, asynchronicity allows users to edit their posts and anonymity minimises the influence of interpersonal variables that play a key role in the management of rapport in disagreement sequences (Angouri, 2012). More specifically, the time lag between messages allows opportunities for text editing and text awareness that is markedly different from spoken interaction. Anonymity has been related to online political discourse as it may make participants more ‘vocal and upfront’ (Papacharissi, 2002: 23).

The interactants form a strong alliance against the original post and its author. This, however, is not only expressed through the text – pro- and anti-GD users constitute possible ‘invisible’ audiences here as online participants can indicate their preference through dis/‘likes’. Note that the original post attracted 1187 ‘likes’ and those challenging it an even larger number.

Disagreement is unmitigated and Tomas Phillip’s stance is directly challenged. ‘No’/response-particle-prefaced postings (e.g. lines 8, 79) and question–response sequences (e.g. lines 52–57, 72–75) are used to express opposition and cast doubt on, if not negate, the substance of the argument. Questions are multifunctional and here are used to do power by implying a gap in the logic of the argument (e.g. lines 52–57), to challenge Tomas Phillip’s face (e.g. line 69); rhetorical questions (e.g. lines 33–34) are also used to reposition the debate. The second-person pronoun ‘you’ is used by both ‘sides’ (e.g. lines 12, 25, 45) to exclude the ‘other’ from the ‘in-group’ and expose the suggested weakness in the addressee’s stance. Verbal attacks are sanctioned by the moderators in this particular context and the interactants seem to overall adhere. Name calling (e.g. brain dead yahoos), however, and personal attacks (e.g. line 77) are used to aggravate disagreement.

Two ideologies and two identity narratives of the past are contrasted and challenge each other through this heated disagreement sequence: Greek resistance to fascism on the one hand; and Greek resistance to the Orient and defence against the Ottoman Empire, on the other. Each of these pasts is used to justify a political-ideological stance, contra- and pro-GD, and what GD actually means and implies, ideologically. In this way, the discussions relate to collective common-sense positionings about Greek national identity and identity narratives; we thus encounter two success stories drawn on as a topos of history – success in fighting the Nazis and success in fighting non-Christians (cf. B earlier).

Overall, in the 2012 data set, GD’s ‘help’ and some of their rhetoric on anti-immigration and corrupt politicians find fertile ground even among those who construct self as anti-GD (see lines 80–82 especially). In the broader socio-political context, cases of violence against various past and present MPs have been noted and tolerated by wider society (e.g. Papasarantopoulos, 2012). This bears significant implications for the current political culture and tolerance of violence in Greece and Europe more broadly, as similar phenomena are noted.

In Extract 2, the indisputable blameworthiness of the murder is foregrounded and causality between the financial crisis and the party is negotiated in light of the recent event.

The postings below constitute part of a popular thread from the 2013 postings, which includes a high number of participants debating the points raised in individual messages. The interaction here follows a different pattern from that in Extract 1.

Extract 2 18/09/13 8:06 pm 268 ‘likes’ 1 gortzis10 – There would not be a Golden Dawn if there were honest politicians who truly served the people. 2 3 18/09/13 8:10pm 577 ‘likes’ 4 NickLancaster > gortzis10 – Are you suggesting it’s OK to go round murdering people because you believe your politicians to be corrupt? 5 18/09/2013 8:25pm 136 ‘likes’ 6 pavlakou3 > NickLancaster – Hi Nick Are you suggesting it’s OK to go round murdering people because you believe your politicians to be corrupt? That’s not what he/she is saying. If Greek politics were not so corrupt these neo-Nazis would never have gained any traction. 7 8 9 18/09/2013 8:33pm 83 ‘likes’ 10 NickLancaster > pavlakou3 – Thanks pavlakou3 I do understand the point, but gortzis10’s line risks being succour to the neo-fascists and hints at legitimising their actions. Best avoided IMO. 11 12 18/09/2013 09:05pm 43 ‘likes’ 13 gortzis10 > NickLancaster – No, but there is a troubling democratic deficit within the EU. Technocrats and unelected officials control many major countries in difficulty. The real surprise is that there is not more violence, directed at those culpable in the destruction of those countries and its citizens. 14 15 16 18/09/201309:27pm 35 ‘likes’ 17 GOPtraveller> gortzis10 – No, there would still be a Golden Dawn but they would not be able to exploit any political corruption and especially the foolish desire of the democratic parties in Greece to join the EU/Eurozone at all costs. It’s no good democrats/anti-fascists just saying Golden Dawn are fascists, so lock them up. We have to properly analyse why they have been able to garner the political support that has gained them 18 seats in the Greek parliament. Have the Democratic Parties admitted they were wrong to join the Eurozone and especially in the way that they did? 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 18/09/2013 11:31pm 22 ‘likes’ 25 NickLancaster > gortzis10 – gortzis10 thanks for the reply – I agree completely with your concerns about the democratic deficit – but as I said above seeing Golden Dawn as the flip side of that coin is a dangerous path IMO – best deal with the two issues separately murdering somebody can never be a proportionate response to a democratic deficit 26 27 28 29 19/09/201302:17am 21 ‘likes’ 30 eggofsnake> gortzis10 – There would not be a Golden Dawn if there were honest politicians who truly served the people. 31 32 Hm very thoughtful and impressive comment. Shame our world isn’t full of intellectuals like you. Of course, if politicians are corrupt then people just naturally become fascists. Golden Dawn deserves sympathy for their victimisation in the hands of corrupt politicians. 33 34 35

The relationship between GD and the in/actions of political institutions echoes the earlier examples we saw. In this second excerpt, however, the acts of violence are brought to the interaction in constructing a moral contradiction between the party’s (and those aligning with a pro-GD ideology) claims of being moral and honest and the act of murder (of a ‘real’ white Greek man). This is clearly illustrated in lines 4 and 5. The debate is picked up (lines 6–9) by another user who positions self as a ‘neutral voice’ in between the two opposing stances. The message opens with an informal greeting sequence (line 6), which makes the message directly recognisable by the intended recipient, ‘NickLancaster’. In this posting, the actions of ‘corrupt’ politicians are blamed for the very existence of the party, a position of scapegoating (cf. C earlier), partly accepted by the user who challenged the original posting. The response returns the potential face threat (thanks + user name, line 10) and highlights the possible justification for violence in the stance adopted by the original user, gortzis10.

The short time lag between the postings (left-hand column) contributes to a conversational tone and fast-paced debate which includes short messages between the interactants and some features of online language (e.g. IMO in line 12). Temporal distance from a message allows time for ‘editing’ a response, while the speed and immediacy of interaction influence the language used (Angouri and Tseliga, 2010).

The ability to quote and edit or interfere with the format of a sender’s message and the order in which messages are presented in online interactions is another factor influencing language use in blogs and fora (Herring, 2007). The interspersion of postings with in-between quotes from other messages contributes to the dynamicity and fluidity of asynchronous online communication as ‘the text that is constructed is […] not so much an instance of quoting to refer to a previous message as it is the creation of a new text, which is a collaborative work of a number of participants’ (McElhearn, 1996: np). In lines 6, 7, 30 and 31, quoting part of a previous message allows for floor management as the user is able to select the addressee and to swiftly shift the topic and refocus the discussion.

Interaction between the key participants is again mostly unmitigated (e.g. ‘No’-prefaced turns in lines 13/17) and the use of direct questions (e.g. lines 4–5) shows power negotiation between users regarding the validity of the arguments (as in the first example). Questions aiming to challenge understanding or elicit knowledge resemble a ‘teacher–student’ asymmetrical relationship (e.g. Sarangi, 1998) and are strategically used here to support the two conflicting stances, as in the previous extract. The participants, however, do some interactional work to address each other’s face needs and to create common ground. Lines 25 and 29 are good examples, as is the lack of use of exclusive pronouns (e.g. ‘we’ in line 20). Although work in disagreement has emphasised the perceived importance of reaching consensus and highlighted the interactional work done to attend to the interlocutor’s face needs (Angouri and Locher, 2012), users of online boards are typically engaged in the debate of controversial topics which raise strong emotions and are conducive to conflictual talk. Given the situational context and the affordances of the medium, users show a preference, in the data we analysed, for directness in projecting accusations, denials and justifications.

To conclude, the notion of the abstract ‘democratic deficit’ which presupposes knowledge about the reference of this attribution (usually referring to the European Union; Krzyżanowski, 2010) is debated in this second extract and used to justify the party’s existence and growth. At the same time, the logical gap between conflating the agency of ‘corrupt politicians’ and the morally condemnable act of murder is recycled by ‘NickLancaster’ (lines 10–12) to rhetorically support his stance, which attracted the highest number of ‘likes’ (577). This could be indicative of the different nature of justification strategies used in the two data sets. While in 2012, justifications and excuses seemed to have wider acceptance, the event of the murder marks different dynamics in blame attributions between both those who construct self as pro- and anti-GD.

Concluding remarks

Our article has attempted to tackle a complex nexus of relationships among crises and sense making, blame attribution, disagreement and conflict talk and the re-emergence of an extreme right-wing party, GD. The analysis of our data has shown that a range of imagined groups are held accountable by users for the situation in Greece and for the party’s growth. This is also the focus of heated debated in relevant online blogs.

We also proposed a theoretical and analytical approach for the interpretation of the data, allowing us to link the macro/micro contexts and to access the multiple layers of meaning. Finally, we related our discussion to the very context of the internet as a site for political engagement: it is indeed the case that the affordances of technology and the development of social media and online fora have dramatically changed the means and opportunities for public engagement and debate (e.g. Baym and boyd, 2012). This has raised hopes for widening participation in political activism and civic engagement, although scepticism has also been voiced, indicating that social networking seems to be higher on users’ preference list (Wojcieszak and Mutz, 2009). While the internet undoubtedly creates new spaces for political engagement, this does not necessarily mean that users will become more engaged. Terms such as ‘netizens’ infiltrate academic jargon and reflect the changing dynamics of cyberspace but not, as yet, of transformed political practices (Barton and Lee, 2013). At the same time, while the question of whether the internet will transform the Habermasian political sphere remains open, online fora provide an opportunity to capture the negotiation of beliefs and stances between lay people who self-select (often on the basis of common denominators) and participate in online communities. We support those who argue that further research is needed here.

Overall, the aim of our article was not to provide definitive answers, if they indeed exist, but rather to raise a set of questions that need to be addressed in further research. They have to do with the way crises are enacted as well as the particular phenomenon of GD in the Greek socio-political sphere and the implications of the ‘culture of violence’ for Greece and Europe more generally. Greece has been in a state of ‘crisis’ continuously for the last six years and constitutes a significant case for the analysis of perceptions of boundaries between ‘crises’ and ‘normality’. Unsurprisingly, the analysis has shown that the ‘feel’ from the data is that ‘Grecovery’, widely used in the dominant political discourse at the moment, is clearly not aligned with the deeply troubled socio-political and dire economic context that emerges from taking a closer look at everyday discourses.

We close the article by noting that despite highlighting GD’s past and condemning extreme violence in the media and dominant political discourse, in recent polls (January 2014) the party seems to be supported by 10–12% of the polls’ participants. The rise of the far right in Europe has been addressed by a number of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. More detailed studies in the sphere of the ‘mundane’ and ‘everyday’ are necessary, however, to shed light on whether and how lay people resist or condone the phenomenon.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Jo Angouri is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, UK. Jo’s research expertise is in sociolinguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis. She has carried out research in a range of corporate and institutional contexts and her work concerns both online and face-to-face interaction. Jo has published work on meeting talk, disagreement on- and off-line, workplace-written discourse and language policy/language practice in the workplace. She has recently edited a special issue on Multilingualism in the Workplace (Multilingua, 2014) and is working on a monograph with Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini (Mapping Intercultural Communication, Routledge). Her current work also includes a comparative analysis of discourse in business meetings and a multidisciplinary project on hospital talk.

Ruth Wodak has been Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, since 2004. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Örebro in Sweden in 2010. She is a past president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea and was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria in 2011. Her research interests focus on discourse studies, gender studies, language and/in politics, prejudice and discrimination. She is co-editor of the journals Discourse & Society, Critical Discourse Studies and Language and Politics, and co-editor of the book series Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC). Her most recent book publications include Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (with Richardson, 2013, Routledge), Rightwing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse (with KhosraviNik and Mral, 2013, Bloomsbury) and, The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual (Palgrave, 2011).

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