Hegemonic masculinity and right-wing populism: The case of Chega

• Autor(a) principal: van der Does, Sophie
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/26480
• topic: Sociologia política -- Political sociology; Masculinity and right-wing populism; Chega; Mobilizations frames; Sociology of masculinity; Masculinidade e populismo de extrema-direita; Sociologia da masculinidade

The radical-right is dominated by men, and yet there is little research on the role of masculinity in creating this support. In my thesis, I look into this theoretical gap by means of an emerging right-wing populist party in Portugal, called Chega. I make two contributions: illuminate the role of masculinity played in Chega’s ideological appeal, and whilst doing so, shed light on what the Portuguese case can tell us about the role of masculinity and the extreme-right at large. To explore the link between masculinity and Chega’s right-wing populism, I conduct a discourse analysis on the party’s political programs and their Twitter account. My analysis shows that masculinity plays an important role on the populist performance of this party, as it underpins its populist direction. In other words, the use of masculinity strengthens Chega’s populist appeal, as it is used to reinforce the main antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’. However, even though masculinity as such is never explicitly thematized by Chega, I show that masculinity is at work in the background. Thus, the Portuguese case shows that gender is integral to the populist aspects of the far-right.