Nationalism and antisemitism in postnational Europe

The problem of nationalism and antisemitism as interrelated ideological patterns is of high relevance in contemporary Europe, particularly against the background of a "postnational constellation" (Habermas) characterised by pluralism and cultural mobility, globalised economy and the nation-state`s change of function. Especially in the current period of global economic crisis a particular vulnerability to producing nationalist and antisemitic reaction, whereby the moments of both tend to intertwine, becomes evident. This research project aims at investigating the current intermediation of nationalism and antisemitism in a cross- country comparative perspective, including Austria and England. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis, print media debates on the current economic crisis shall be analysed as to how they operate with nationalist and antisemitic discourse fragments. The main perspective I propose in analysing these debates draws on the complex and seemingly paradox relationship between postnational constellations on the one hand and persisting instances of nationalism and antisemitism on the other hand. Against the background of a thorough theoretical analysis of nationalism and antisemitism as two intersecting ideological patterns, a critical discourse analysis of the print media discourse on the financial crisis in Austria and England will be carried out. The guiding questions are the following: How is nationalism overall expressed in the media coverage on the economic crisis? Which antisemitic stereotypes are to be found in these media debates? In what kind of set-ups do nationalism and antisemitism intertwine? Where are the transnational similarities and differences, continuities and discontinuities in these constellations? How are the main characteristics of the intermediation of nationalism and antisemitism to be estimated against the background of a "postnational constellation"? In mainstream print media, nationalism as well as antisemitism do not generally occur in a brutally exclusivist manner, as openly articulated racist forms of expression, but rather in latent forms, encoded in everyday linguistic practices and routines. For this project, a broad concept of nationalism and antisemitism is deliberately chosen. Thus the analysis is not restricted to the far political right but will give priority to everyday modes of inclusion and exclusion. By focusing on discourses around the Self and the Other, "us" and "them", in the context of the global economic crisis, everyday social communicative practices shall be problematized in order to trace the role of nationalism and antisemitism within them. This approach draws on the working hypothesis that in contemporary Western societies, extreme and open nationalism and antisemitism are not the only force that stands in the way of a society of world citizens, but also unnoticed but well-practiced routines of exclusionary identification in everyday life. These routines subtly refer to a horizon of understanding, an archive of ideological habits, which by tradition includes nationalism and antisemitism.

How is the relevance of antisemitism and nationalism today to be assessed against the background of an increasingly globalized Europe? Are they still effective ideologies entrenched within social and economic structures or rather oddments of an old Europe that actually contradict the postnational constellation characterized by pluralism and cultural mobility, globalized economy and a changed role of the nation state? The question as to whether antisemitism and nationalism in todays Europe occur despite or precisely because of the postnational development was the central issue of this research project that was carried out at Lancaster University (UK), Georgetown University Washington DC and Vienna University in cooperation with Ruth Wodak.The normative and theoretical argumentation of Jürgen Habermas concerning a post-national constellation entails the necessity on the part of European citizens to move towards an increasingly post-national way and to identify with cosmopolitanism rather than with ethnicity, in an open rather than exclusionary way. However, empirical evidence seems to run counter to this assumption: In Europe today, nationalistic and antisemitic attitudes are on the increase. In order to confront the normative concept of post-nationalism with European reality, validated empirical methods of ideology critique were applied, precisely the discourse-historical approach of Critical Discourse Analysis established by Ruth Wodak. Thus, British and Austrian print media discourses were comparatively analysed as to whether and how they instrumentalize antisemitic and nationalist lines of argumentation. A major outcome shows that in most cases antisemitism does not occur in an openly racist and exclusionary way, but rather in latent forms, coded in everyday communicative practices and routines. Particularly in tabloid press old resentments against Jews that were considered obsolete are utilized and thus still find their way into the public. Applying the Iudeus ex machine-strategy various, also contradictory, traditional as well as new antisemitic stereotypes are discursively interwoven and thus instrumentalized for different political ends from determining purported culprits for the economic crisis in the Austrian daily newspaper Neue Kronen Zeitung up to the isolation of the Labour Party in the Daily Mail in Great Britain. These two cases were analysed in detail. They showed how antisemitic and nationalistic moments merge into a comprehensive discourse of exclusion in order to construct an alien inside and outside Great Britain and Austria.