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Conspiracy theories, right-wing populism and foreign policy: the case of the Alternative for Germany

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Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between conspiracy theories, populism and foreign policy by shedding light on the affective force of conspiracy theories in mobilising ‘the people’. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, it conceptualises conspiracy theories as fantasies that promise to satisfy subjects’ desire for a complete identity by accusing ‘hidden’ forces of blocking this perceived-to-be-lost but ultimately unattainable sense of ontological wholeness. The article argues that conspiracy theories allow populists to appeal to voters through emotive narratives which offer a dualistic outlook on global politics and (1) blame the conspirators for such feelings of lack, (2) transgress the conventions of the mainstream discourse by appealing to the obscene, and (3) valorise the populist actor for uncovering the plot against popular sovereignty and thereby promising to make ‘the people’ whole again. While conspiracy theories have been studied in other disciplines, International Relations scholarship has paid very little attention to them and, if at all, discussed their role in the context of the United States. This article illustrates its arguments with the case of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany and examines the role of conspiracy theories and foreign policy in its attempt to stage itself as ‘true’ representative of the German people.

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Notes

  1. The data-set for the analysis consists of the AfD’s party programme and election manifestos, speeches and tweets by leading AfD politicians, statements published on the AfD’s website, the AfD’s twitter account, and articles published on the news website freiewelt.net, which is run by the AfD politician Beatrix von Storch and her husband. The period of investigation stretches from the beginning of the AfD’s election campaign in 2017 till June 2019.

  2. This conception of the subject involves a rejection of methodological individualism, since the subject can only constitute itself in the intersubjective discursive order and its desires and emotions are never purely personal but belong to the social world.

  3. This, in turn, can explain how discourses can sustain their appeal, although they ultimately never succeed in filling the lack in ‘our’ identities and social orders – an aspect missing in Laclau’s discourse theoretical approach to populism.

  4. This resembles the fantasy of the nation/state congruence, see Mandelbaum (2016).

  5. In the German context, this can be illustrated with the debate on a German Leitkultur, in which conservative politicians were ultimately unable to pin down what exactly these unique cultural features are beyond platitudes.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their very helpful and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank the participants of the panel ‘Populism, the EU, and Crisis’ at the 2019 European International Studies Association annual conference in Sofia for their comments on an early draft of this article. This research was supported by research grant ECF-2018-656 from the Leverhulme Trust.

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  1. Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, King’s India Institute, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

    Thorsten Wojczewski

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Wojczewski, T. Conspiracy theories, right-wing populism and foreign policy: the case of the Alternative for Germany. J Int Relat Dev 25, 130–158 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00218-y

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