Social class struggle as a Greek political discourse

Abstract

This article delves into the construction of social class division in Greek political discourse. More specifically, the focus is on ‘ταξική πάλη’ (class struggle) as a discourse that has started being carved in Greek media since the current leftist government party, Syriza, won the election in 2015 for the first time in the country’s political history. Contrary to Syriza, which always frames its arguments on the basis of a divisive class fight discourse between the elitists and laypeople, New Democracy, the liberal and main oppositional party, tries to play down this discourse by advocating a more unifying and social class inclusive discourse. The analysis suggests that social class struggle is a theme framed within a wider shifting (anti)populist discourse constantly being negotiated linguistically in ironic ways among political elites. Both the government and opposition parties engage in tactical maneuvering of competing political discourses that, in different ways, articulate attachments to the ‘people’. The theoretical contribution of this study is the discursive theorization of social class struggle as a digitally constructed and politically relevant discourse in the context of Greek populism and its discontents.