Populist Narratives in the Czech 2021 General Elections: 'Hero Fights, Ruler Protects?' The Linkage between Brand Archetypes and Populist Narratives

In: Politologický časopis, Heft 3

Abstract

Using Critical Discourse Analysis and a qualitative dataset of social media communication, this article traces the transformation of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's populist narrative before the Czech parliamentary elections in 2021. It argues that while in the 2013 and 2017 elections the prime minister's central political narrative was based only on anti-elitist populism, it had already moved towards complete populism by the elections in 2021. In Babiš's central narrative, one can find not only a reference to the will of the people and criticism of political elites, but also the exclusion of specific groups. The article suggests that a change in the archetype of the political brand of Babiš, who began his career in politics with a combination of the archetypes of a hero and a rebel, may also have a role in the changing of the narrative. However, Babiš entered the electoral clash in 2021 as prime minister and part of the establishment, which forced his move to the archetype of ruler. As this empirical study shows, the complete populist narrative is very compatible with the ruler's archetype.