Co-opting Discontent: Bulgarian Populism, Local Interests and Russian Propaganda
Co-opting Discontent: Bulgarian Populism, Local Interests and Russian Propaganda

Summary/Abstract: Russian propaganda co-opts Western grassroots criticism of liberalism and globalization, recasting both left and right populism in nationalist terms. Vice versa, local actors borrow the Russian propaganda package and use it for their populist purposes. This is the general finding of an analysis of Bulgarian media discourse in 2013–2016, which proceeded in three steps: semantic analysis of the vocabulary of anti-liberal and anti-democratic propaganda and extraction of specific keywords and catch phrases; frequency analysis of the uses of these words and phrases in 3,080 online media outlets for the four-year period under study; content analysis of a sample of 3,305 publications from eight typologically different media outlets.The analysis identified four simplistic and interrelated anti-liberal and anti-democratic theses:1. The US and NATO are a global hegemon/puppet-master which is pull- ing the strings both of Brussels and of national governments; 2. Europe is dying because of its cultural decline (‘liberasty’) under the blows of the migrant invasion unleashed by the US, and because of the lame-duck, puppet European bureaucracy (‘Eurocracy’). In the final analysis, Europe is dying because it is united: the EU is a construction which serves the interests of the US and of global corporations, and it is an enemy of the European peoples; 3. Russia is rising. Although it is a victim of Western aggression, Russia is a guardian of its age-old sovereignty and of traditional values, and it is actually the true saviour of Europe; 4. Bulgaria’s liberal elites are venal: civic movements, human rights organizations, independent media outlets, pro-Western politicians and parties are represented as an indistinguishable whole, and all of them are ‘foreign agents’ – puppets of foreign interests. The populist-propaganda discursive front developing in the Bulgarian public sphere since 2013 is distinctly ‘pro-Russian’, although the data show that it is not always directly inspired by Russia. The content analysis identified three different rationales for using those cliches.

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