The discourse and aesthetics of populism as securitisation style
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820973071 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820973071
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(1) 127 –147
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820973071
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The discourse and aesthetics
of populism as securitisation
style
Bohdana Kurylo
University College London
Abstract
Populists have lately been at the forefront of securitisation processes, yet little attention has
been paid to the relationship between populism and securitisation. This paper investigates
the role of securitisation in populism, exploring how the populist mode of securitising differs
from traditional securitisation processes. It argues that securitisation is inherently embedded
in populism which embodies a particular style of securitisation with a distinct set of discursive
and aesthetic repertoires. The populist invocation of societal security and their claim to defend
the fundamentally precarious identity of ‘the endangered people’ necessitate an unceasing
construction of new threats. Aiming to discredit ‘elitist’ securitisation processes, populism invests
in a specific construction of the referent object, the securitising actor and their relationship
to the audience. The populist securitising style also carries a distinctive aesthetic centred on
‘poor taste’, sentimental ordinariness and unprofessionalism, examining which can widen our
understanding of the aesthetics of security.
Keywords
aesthetics, populism, securitisation, societal security, style
‘We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our
people’ – wrote the President of the United States Donald Trump on his Twitter the day
after the ‘London Bridge’ attack by the so-called ‘Islamic State’ on 4 June 2017.1 With
his daily production of such little ‘speech acts’, Trump has been eager to implement
several extraordinary security policies, such as invoking national emergency powers to
secure funding to build a border wall with Mexico. Trump is just one example of how
populists rally audiences around themes of security, as also seen in the Brexit campaign
Corresponding author:
Bohdana Kurylo, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 16 Taviton St,
Bloomsbury, London WC1H 0BW, UK.
Email: bohdana.kurylo.17@ucl.ac.uk
973071IRE0010.1177/0047117820973071International RelationsKurylo
research-article2020
Article
128 International Relations 36(1)
and the European ‘refugee crisis’. In this paper, I investigate the role that securitisation
plays in populism, exploring how the populist mode of securitising differs from tradi-
tional securitisation processes. The focus is on populism in its mainstream, right-wing
form, since the complexity of ‘left populism’ deserves separate attention and is beyond
the scope of this inquiry.2
Scholars have long highlighted the role of perceptions of crisis or insecurity in provid-
ing an entry point for populism.3 According to Laclau, ‘some degree of crisis [. . .] is a
necessary precondition for populism’.4 Ontological security research has also shown that
populism responds to the everyday anxieties and fears of ordinary individuals and the
heightened sense that global forces are beyond their control.5 Scholars have also explored
the role of populism in triggering crises and, in so doing, fostering the right environment
for its appeal to succeed.6 As Brubaker said, populists ‘construct, perform, intensify,
dramatise and, in these ways, contribute to producing the very crises to which they claim
to respond’.7 Homolar and Scholz also show that populists use emotionally charged, anti-
establishment crisis narratives that instil in their audiences a sense of loss.8
The impetus for this paper comes from the latter proposition that it is not so much inse-
curity that generates populism, but populism that produces insecurity. Translated into the
language of Security Studies, this implies that populists actively exercise securitisation –
that is, the process of discursively framing issues as matters of security. According to the
‘Copenhagen School’ framework, security is not an objective condition but ‘a quality
actors inject into issues by securitising them, which means to stage them on the political
arena’ and ‘have them accepted by a sufficient audience to sanction extraordinary defen-
sive moves’.9 The dynamics of this process vary depending on the context, and securitisers
might use a diversity of communicative means beyond speech, such as visual imagery and
physical action. The result invests the referent subject with ‘an aura of unprecedented
threatening complexion’, which can justify otherwise unacceptable measures to block it.10
Still, scholars tend to speak of securitisation merely as a ready-made tool that populists
occasionally employ to give urgency to their message, overlooking the pivotal role that
securitisation strategies play in the dynamics of populism.11
This paper delves deeper into the relationship between the two, proceeding through
three sections. The next section shows that securitisation is inherently embedded in pop-
ulism. They are related through the populist invocation of the concept of societal security,
as populists claim to defend the identity community of the people against the elite.
Sustaining this claim necessitates a constant re-articulation of a securitising act staging
the people as ‘endangered’. The forging of security problems and crises provides popu-
lists with the opportunities to (re)produce the very identity they claim to protect. Since this
identity is built through an antagonistic form of othering, it remains fundamentally pre-
carious and insecure, leading populists to constantly initiate new cycles of securitisation.
My argument is that populism presupposes securitisation but practises it in a way that
discursively and aesthetically differs from ‘traditional’ securitisation. Following Moffitt,
populism is defined as a style which takes the form of ‘embodied, symbolically mediated
performances made to audiences that are used to create and navigate the fields of power
that comprise the political’.12 It is built around two central features: (i) the claim to speak
and act in the name of ‘the people’, whereby populists aesthetically embody their image;
and (ii) the construction of an antagonistic divide between two sides – the good, ‘pure’
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