"Sexism in right-wing populist online discourse in Italy and the US: A contrastive analysis"

Building on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which combines insights from Critical Discourse Analysis with research in gender and sexism studies, this chapter presents the results of a qualitative contrastive research on online sexism against female politicians by two right-wing populist leaders, former US President Donald J. Trump and current League leader Matteo Salvini. Consistently with previous studies on right-wing populist discourse strategies, the results of our research, which features Trump’s conspicuous use of name-calling aimed at character assassination, reveal the deployment of similar tactics. Female political opponents may be represented as untrustworthy members of an elite, inadequate, or too emotional. Furthermore, personifications, and dehumanising strategies through objectification and animalisation, although adopted differently by the two leaders, are designed to reaffirm traditional gender norms, keeping women away from leadership positions.