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Nigel Farage, as the charismatic figurehead that all populist movements require, rose to political prominence as the frontman of Euroscepticism in the UK. Despite never winning a seat in the House of Commons, his presence in mainstream political discourse steadily grew during his 24-year Campaign to get Britain out of the EU, to the point where he became synonymous with Brexit issues and accrued a platform from which he could relentlessly propagate his message. A valuable strategy to do this was through his regular appearances on LBC Radio, a unique ‘Phone-In’ platform in which the presenters need not retain impartiality or balance, and from which Farage could regularly get his message into the public domain, which allowed him to be a more significant mainstream voice than his electoral record warranted. Notably, this thesis will assess his discourse from his shows in the early months of 2016, coinciding with the Cologne Attacks on New Years Eve, a tragic event seemingly tailor-made for Farage’s Brexit campaign built upon provoking fear around the issue of immigration. The starting point of this papers analysis of Farage’s Eurosceptic program will be a specific philosophical anthropology perspective; a conceptual understanding of the human being based on Arnold Gehlen’s idea of humans as deficient beings (Mängelwesen). As such this thesis offers a unique way of assessing right-wing political discourse. By utilizing a conceptual starting point of Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology: understanding the human condition as inherently deficient; possessing limited rationality; and reliant on a relief system that includes culture and institutions; this thesis assesses the ways in which Farage’s discourse on LBC exploits the fundamental vulnerabilities of citizens. The conclusions of such a discourse analysis are twofold. Firstly, Farage’s appearances on LBC demonstrate political discourse that exploits the innately deficient human being, both through the impact on individuals, and through its de-stabilizing effect on the integral human relief system. To this end, it reveals narrative development and rhetorical techniques that appeal to emotions over rational means: inciting anger and mistrust of the establishment and the EU, provoking fear particularly in light of the Cologne Attacks. Secondly, this analysis can be seen to have significant implications for the future of European Integration. It becomes clear that Farage’s success can be in part attributed to a problem that the EU must address. Critically in the case of Brexit, a limited politicization of European Governance, with citizens who lack thorough understanding of it, serves to increase the vulnerability of voters towards fear-provoking, irrational, Eurosceptic narratives.
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