Race and Culture in Right-Wing Political Discourses in the UK and France

This paper examines discourses related to race and culture among right-wing populist parties in France and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the British National Party (BNP), and the Front National (FN) have shown recent gains in domestic and European Union Parliamentary elections that seem to contradict the past decades’ shift towards a more open and transnational Europe. The increasing appeal of these parties promises to have a profound effect on Europe’s future and demands a closer examination of party discourses, particularly as they relate to shifting rhetoric on topics central to the platform of each party. Immigration is an issue problematized by most European far-right parties, including UKIP, the BNP, and FN. Employing critical discourse analysis, this paper explores the various ways in which texts produced by each of these three parties engage with race and culture, both implicitly and explicitly, in their discussion of immigration policies. Manifestos published by each party and statements made by party leadership will be used to demonstrate how racialized cultural differences are a central component in the political platforms of UKIP, the BNP, and FN, even in the absence of explicit references to race. Using James Blaut’s theory of cultural racism, this paper will further discuss how the covertly racialized rhetoric of these three parties is related to a wider trend in racialized discourse.