"They are just a danger": Racialized ideologies in Northern Italy and the Philippines

In: International journal of the sociology of language: IJSL, Band 2020, Heft 265, S. 33-56

Abstract

Abstract
There has been much discussion of the proliferation of racialized narratives both offline and online and its role in the current electoral successes of far-right movements across the globe. We extend this conversation by analyzing narrative practices from two contexts where far-right parties and figures enjoy popular support: Italy and the Philippines. In both cases, we show how narratives that pivot on race constitute stancetaking practices that align with far-right agendas. In the Northern Italian case, racialized stances emerge in storytelling events, through which participants (co)construct extracomunitari, or 'migrants from outside the European Union', as "other" and "a danger" to the Italian nation. In the case of Filipino YouTube users, President Duterte's supporters subvert racialized tropes through anti-imperial narratives in ways that attempt to delegitimize human rights criticisms of the drug war. We show how, in and through narrative practices, speech participants justify exclusionary and eliminationist politics in far-right contexts.