Framing exclusion in the public sphere: far-right mobilisation and the debate on Charlie Hebdo in Italy

Abstract:

While the January 2015 Paris terrorist attacks presented a crucial opportunity for far-right mobilisation, the focus on liberal democratic values and Charlie Hebdo’s non-conformist progressive profile presented challenges for right-wing discourse.

Taking Italy as a paradigmatic case of public controversies on cultural and religious affairs, this article examines the opportunities and constraints generated by multicultural crises for far-right framing choices. A qualitative frame analysis analyses the discourse of three types of far-right actors.

While the populist radical right, extreme right, and ultra-religious right groups disagree on crucial criteria for outgroup exclusion, they collectively employed the Charlie Hebdo controversy to redefine their exclusionary discourse on liberal grounds with the goal of gaining legitimacy in the mainstream public sphere.