Tongue is more than blood

In this book, I have tried to illustrate the importance of language for contemporary neo-populist political expressions. In the wake of Klemperer’s work, I discovered that language forms a specific social reality by activating above all projective mechanisms capable of reinforcing the difference between in-group and out-group. In the contemporary context, the neo-populist language and its medium contributes to the transformation of the “modern” representation of facts. What neo-populist communication successfully practices is the substitution of data analysis through a form of sentiment analysis. I consider this phenomenon in two empirical cases. Brexit and the electoral success of M5S in Italy. Despite the differences between these two forms of neo-populism, in both cases it emerges how language, through its projective mechanisms, can identify a social bloc united against an imaginary enemy.