‘Left-Wing Authoritarianism’ as Situated Rhetoric: Delegitimizing the Political Left in Statements of Greek Right-Wing Politicians on ‘X’

The Beginnings of the Authoritarian Personality

According to Adorno et al.’s (1950) The Authoritarian Personality, fascism drew support by appealing to people’s subjective needs. Understanding its rise therefore requires examining how social conditions interacted with individual personality and consciousness (Billig, 1982; Samelson, 1986). A central claim was that authoritarianism grows from deep-rooted emotional needs shaped largely by early childhood experiences. Under certain economic and political conditions, strict child rearing practices may produce personalities especially susceptible to authoritarian, anti-democratic ideologies and propaganda. This personality type is argued to include intolerance of ambiguity, submissiveness, an obsession with order, obedience to authority, mental rigidity, moralistic and hypocritical preoccupation with sex, hostility, cynicism, and a tendency to seek strong leaders, among others (Billig, 1976, 1982; Nilsson, 2024).

Although the theory sought to explain the emotional and personality dynamics behind the rise of Nazism, the use of attitude scale technology and the shift from the World War II context to the Cold War era opened the way for the concept of left-wing authoritarianism to emerge (Samelson, 1986). Inner tensions¹ within the theory of The Authoritarian Personality contributed to this shift and led to attempts to dissociate internal cognitive structure from specific ideological content (Eysenck, 1954; Rokeach, 1960; see, Conway et al., 2023; Rokeach & Hanley, 1956; Van Hiel et al., 2006). The emphasis on cognitive rigidity and personality opened the way to dissociate authoritarianism from the specific social and political context that gave rise to Nazism and account for its ascendance by means of abstract psychological processes (Durrheim, 1997a; Figgou, 2002; Figgou & Condor, 2006). Altemeyer (1981, 1988), seeking to address the psychometric and conceptual problems identified in the psychological literature regarding Adorno et al.’s F-scale, developed the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. He based this on the original F-scale while conceptualizing RWA as a personality type. In his work, Altemeyer argued and empirically demonstrated that this personality type consisted of three traits: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism.

A departure from the model of authoritarianism as a personality type is marked by Duckitt’s approach to RWA (Duckitt & Bizumic, 2013; Duckitt et al., 2010). Duckitt identified as the foundation of authoritarianism a more general value or motive of retaining collective security in the face of uncertainty and insecurity. This general motive or value is broken down into three more specific motives or values to maintain collective security and are expressed in social attitudinal terms: authoritarianism, conservatism and traditionalism. Authoritarianism refers to attitudinal beliefs regarding strict and harsh measures of social control versus leniency and softness when social rules are violated. Conservatism involves the attitudinal expression of beliefs regarding the need for social unity, cohesion and harmony. Traditionalism is expressed through attitudes that favor traditional values and morality. However, since Duckitt’s approach treats RWA as a set of values expressed through social attitudes and methodologically relies on attitude scales, it is open to the extensive critique of the attitude construct and its measurement developed within the discourse analytic paradigm in social psychology (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, 1988).

A Discursive Turn to the Study of Left-Wing Authoritarianism

Currently, apart from contributions by Durrheim and colleagues (Durrheim, 1997a, 1997b; Gray & Durrheim, 2013), there is an empirical lacuna in the discursive social psychological study of authoritarianism. These studies focus explicitly on authoritarianism, thereby clearly delineating the scope for future discourse analytic work in this field. Important insights can also be gained from earlier social psychological studies that, while located within the discursive psychology tradition, do not focus exclusively on authoritarianism. One fundamental idea, which became the focal point of critique from a discourse analytic perspective, is the supposed mental rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity thought to dominate the authoritarian individual’s thinking. Billig (1982), examining interview data from The Authoritarian Personality, argues that high-scoring individuals often demonstrate ambivalence in their talk. Talking about minority groups, they attempt to downgrade the possible racist connotations of their arguments. Billig, in his later work (1988; Billig et al., 1988), also argues that people may simultaneously adhere to both prejudiced and tolerant values, treating this ambivalence as more than simple lip service to the norm against prejudice. According to the Ideological Dilemmas thesis, societies provide their members with values and beliefs that, in certain contexts, may collide, leading people to demonstrate ambivalence in discourse (Billig et al., 1988). Thus, trying to operationalize and link cognitive styles with personality types or a universal cognitive functioning, while dissociating them from specific contents of beliefs, is a fallacy and cannot provide a solid basis for ideological critique (see also, Durrheim, 1997a).

This critique relates to another central point formulated within the discursive turn in social psychology. For discursive psychology, constructs such as ‘authoritarianism’ should not be treated as mental entities residing within individuals’ minds but rather as rhetorical resources and accomplishments enacted in talk-in-interaction and oriented towards specific interactional ends (Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996). Thus, rather than examining personality types linked to attitudes or values, authoritarianism can be seen as rhetorically occasioned. Consequently, a discursive psychological approach to authoritarianism directs analytic attention to the local context in which authoritarianism is instantiated for interactants, to the rhetorical techniques used to construct such accounts as factual, or more generally to how accountability is managed. While discursive psychology emphasizes a fine-grained analysis of talk or text in interaction, Critical Discursive Social Psychology (hereafter CDSP), most commonly associated with Wetherell’s (1998) work (see also, Edley, 2001), orients analytic attention also to the wider ideological implications that people’s constructions may effect.

Gray and Durrheim’s (2013) study is located within the CDSP strand of work. The authors argue that participants, when discussing topics related to authoritarianism, drew on a broader ideological dilemma juxtaposing societal order and individual freedom. As their analysis demonstrates, participants managed this tension by constructing diverse versions of collective or personal threat. Extant research in the Nordic context examines how politicians (Sakki & Pettersson, 2016) and lay people (Tormis et al., 2024) mobilize versions of populism to construct the unreasonableness of left-wing supporters and populist rhetoric as deviant and serving their own ends. Our study examines how right-wing politicians mobilize an interpretative repertoire of left-wing authoritarianism to render the left-wing SYRIZA party accountable for its politics, especially during its time in power, and delegitimize it in general, while positioning the ND party in contrast as embodying democratic and reasonable governance. At a macro-social level, we aim to demonstrate the ideological consequences that these constructions have for the left-right divide of the political spectrum.

Political Context

Greece has experienced significant political changes over the past fifteen years. In the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis and the imposition of strict austerity measures, a coalition government was formed in 2015 by SYRIZA², a left-wing party led by Alexis Tsipras, and ANEL, a small conservative right-wing party. This coalition governed for four years, a period marked by intense socio-economic challenges and international pressures. In 2019, Nea Dimokratia (hereafter ND), Greece’s principal right-wing party, won the national elections and has since maintained a stable parliamentary majority.

Another important aspect of recent Greek politics is the rise in electoral prominence, in the early 2010s, of the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, which was eventually dismantled in the early 2020s, following the conviction of its leaders for forming a criminal organization. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2009 and throughout the subsequent turbulent political period, a particular ‘centrist’ representational and argumentative trope has been widely circulated in mainstream Greek media, conflating the far-right with the far-left, and associating what are treated as the opposing extremes of the political spectrum with political violence (Vasilaki & Souvlis, 2021). This polarized political and media milieu provides a suitable context for examining how a notion of Left-Wing Authoritarianism may be constructed and mobilized in a platform for political debate such as X.

Data Collection

Our analytic material consists of 3,500 posts³ shared by seventeen (17) accounts held by prominent ND politicians on the platform X between 2018 and 2024⁴. Our study aims to document constructions of Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) in the argumentation of the currently ruling right-wing party. Account selection was informed by institutional rank and active presence on X, consistent posting during the study period (2018-2024), and included influential figures such as the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers. Posts were retrieved from each account via advanced keyword searches available on X, using three central thematic nodes corresponding to key issue areas or clusters of socio-political topics. The nodes originated from the broader research project, Authoritarianism in Lay, Political and Institutional Discourse (project acronym: ALPIS), of which the present study is part. They refer to recent events and developments in domestic and global politics which have sparked heated socio-political debates regarding their authoritarian implications, the alleged retreat of democratic institutions, and political repression. These nodes are: i) the COVID-19 pandemic governance; ii) the Russian invasion in Ukraine; and iii) developments in Greek governmental politics (e.g., a wiretapping scandal and the ruling party’s decision to institute a new police corps with the mandate to police university sites and campuses). The data collection strategy, including the original Greek keywords associated to each node and their English translations, is provided in the Electronic Supplementary Materials (ESM).

Data collection on X can be influenced by the platform’s technical and algorithmic affordances, which may limit the scope of retrieved posts (Álvarez-Peralta et al., 2023). Rather than aiming for an exhaustive corpus representative of Greek MPs' discourse on Χ, we focus on documenting dominant arguments utilized by prominent ND politicians. While this approach limits generalizability, it enables the analysis of central rhetorical and ideological patterns, remaining consistent with the aims of Critical Discursive Social Psychology (CDSP).

Analytical Procedure

Analysis commenced with systematic readings of the 3,500 ND posts. In this stage, approximately 1,500 meaning units—clause(s), phrase(s) or sentence(s) that involve a specific idea, claim or position—were documented and coded (e.g., one post could yield multiple coded units like ‘dogmatic adherence’ and ‘international contrast’), with qualitative data analysis software (ATLAS.ti 24) employed to refine this process. Grouping meaning units by common thematic orientation, we identified three preliminary recurring categories (i.e., ‘trust, danger, and the limits of freedom during the pandemic’, ‘national resilience and Greece as an exemplar of progress’ and ‘institutional reform and democratic legitimacy’). This procedure provided the grounds for identifying a broader content-level pattern, namely ‘relations between authoritarianism and the political left’, involving shared tropes of authoritarianism, democracy, and political stagnation and deviance across the three themes/categories. This constituted the initial step that guided the detailed documentation of a broader interpretative repertoire (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Grounded in the aforementioned content-level pattern, we then documented a wider interpretative repertoire (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) in order to regiment the argumentative resources underpinning the documented thematic pattern and to analyze the potential functions of LWA, whether explicitly invoked or rhetorically operative. We formed the LWA repertoire by abstracting the dominant tropes of the content pattern into culturally specific constellations of recurring proxy terms and concepts (e.g., dogmatic/doctrine, association with authoritarian figures/regimes, (un)democratic practices, and the deep-state), which constitute shared resources for LWA-related censures. The LWA repertoire operates as an overarching rhetorical-ideological setting-baseline that both facilitates and delimits the scope of potential argumentative patterns (see also, Gibson, 2009). Our goal was to systematically map MPs’ diverse mobilization of argumentative patterns oriented towards (de-)legitimizing political positions and accounting for the casting of the political left as authoritarian, thereby providing an organizing framework for the subsequent stages of analysis.

The deployment of the interpretative repertoire analytic concept locates our approach within Critical Discursive Social Psychology (CDSP) (Wetherell, 1998). Substantiating further the synthesis of micro- and macro- analytic priorities that characterizes CDSP⁵, we utilize three additional analytic concepts from CDSP, and the discursive turn in social psychology more generally, in order to explore LWA constructions in the discourse of ND politicians: i) argumentative lines (Billig, 1991, pp. 43-45, 137), ii) (self-/other-) positioning (Wetherell, 1998), and iii) accountability management and fact construction (Edwards & Potter, 1992). With the combined use of these analytic concepts, we foreground the disentanglement of the dilemmatic, argumentative fabric that enables constructions of sociopolitical life and its events.

First, we traced central argumentative lines (Billig, 1991, pp. 43-45, 137), which encapsulate the rhetorical-ideological organization of MPs’ ways of accounting, identifying recurring argumentative resources (e.g., cultural commonplaces, including dominant axioms and dilemmas) around which MPs structure their positions within the LWA repertoire. Argumentative lines were further examined through the rhetorical association or differentiation of ‘the political left’ and ‘authoritarianism’, as MPs justified their positions while preventing and/or undermining counter-arguments (Billig, 1991, pp. 120-121). Subsequently, we focused on how right-wing political actors position themselves and their adversaries. We treat positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990; Wetherell, 1998) as an analytic concept that synthesizes the micro-analytic priority of disentangling interactionally occasioned selves / identities (e.g., Potter, 1996) with the macro-analytic concern of locating these selves / identities within the wider ideological, political, and socio-cultural contexts within which they operate (e.g., Edley, 2001).

Finally, we analyzed MPs’ management of accountability and orientation to fact construction as central to the (de-)legitimization of political positions (Edwards & Potter, 1992), documenting discursive devices oriented towards representing political decisions as credible, authoritative, or impartial, and/or attributing or deflecting agency. By eclectically combining our analytic tools and concepts, we foreground the interplay between rhetorical/ideological action and complex political identity work, identifying LWA-related constructions situated within the online rhetorical context of X and the broader Greek socio-political context.

The analysis includes Greek-to-English translated posts, selected to reflect the diversity of documented argumentative lines. All analyzed data were publicly available posts shared by public ND political figures, constituting online political discourse on a popular social media platform.

The ‘Heretical’ Local Political Left as an Absurd Exception to International ‘Prototypical Representatives’ of Left Ideology

The first argumentative line is deployed within a heated—at the time—Greek public debate regarding the introduction of a legislative framework for the creation and operation of private universities and police intervention in public universities. This argumentative line involves the mobilization of cultural hierarchies in the form of the juxtaposition of occidental progress with what is presented as the exceptional backwardness of the local left (Bozatzis, 2014). Drawing on the representational modality of localized political exceptionalism, MPs construct the local political left’s ‘dogmatic’ adherence to outdated policies as an axiomatic infringement of ‘self-evident’, universalized democratic standards. In doing so, they position SYRIZA as an isolated, irrational outlier, contrasting its stance with that of a comparatively more rational and pragmatic international political left.

The first extract challenges SYRIZA's insistence on banning private universities. Its author is Kostis Hatzidakis, a long-standing figure in both the Greek and European arenas, currently serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Vice President of both ND and the European People’s Party. At the time of the post (February 2019), Alexis Tsipras was leading the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government.

Hatzidakis deploys hierarchical cultural comparisons to delegitimize SYRIZA-led governmental decisions as permeated by outdated, dogmatic, and unrealistic ideological assumptions. This is achieved through extreme case formulations (Pomerantz, 1986), which, first, construct a minimal group/minority that deviates from what the MP implies are universal and reasonable norms of governance (‘only 4 countries’, Line 1), and, then, particularize by positioning Greece (‘only in Greece’, Line 2) as the sole contemporary exception regarding the ban on private universities, thereby rendering the claim difficult to contest. This account mobilizes seemingly factual comparative, historical, temporal, and geopolitically situated claims to position SYRIZA as politically rigid and out of touch with international developments. By aligning Greece with North Korea, Bhutan, and Cuba (Lines 1-2) – presented as prototypical authoritarian regimes and the only countries to have implemented such a ban in 2009 – Hatzidakis suggests a shared regressive, oppressive, and authoritarian orientation on this issue. Stressing SYRIZA’s insistence on ‘banning’ (Lines 1, 2) attributes an authoritarian ‘quality’ to its stance, de-politicizing the ideological basis of its position and recasting it as a hallmark of irrational governance. This, in turn, highlights SYRIZA’S – alleged – exceptionalism and constructs its policies as incompatible with international (and implicitly Western) political norms.

Hatzidakis further ideologically delegitimizes SYRIZA by contrasting its policy with that of the international left, thereby underscoring its alleged authoritarian dogmatism and conventionalism while mitigating potential accusations of partisanship through the development of a thorough argument (Edwards & Potter, 1992, p. 162). He directly invokes and ironically contrasts the figure of Nicolas Maduro, who, despite being positioned on the far left, has not maintained a ban on private higher education (Lines 2-3). The example of Venezuela undermines SYRIZA’s ideological credibility, positioning its members as defenders of an unjustified status quo. SYRIZA is thus constructed as rooted in the outdated ideas of a ‘traditional left’ and as impractical, supporting irrational ideas, irrelevant to contemporary liberal politics and socio-political developments. By arguing that the ‘international political left’ (using Maduro’s example) is opposed to the local political left, Hatzidakis further delegitimizes SYRIZA as excessively regressive and dogmatic, emphasizing its political isolation.

Extract 2 comes from Adonis Georgiades⁶, a Vice President of ND and current Minister of Health, often criticized for overt conservatism and excessive media presence. He mobilizes the Spanish left-wing government as an exemplary case to support ND’s orientation towards strict university policing. Georgiades invokes an incident regarding Pablo Hasél, a rapper convicted for lyrics and tweets accused of ‘glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy’, which led to his arrest by the police on the premises of the University of Lleida.

Georgiades references Hasél’s arrest at a Spanish university (Lines 1-2) to suggest Podemos’ tolerance, or even endorsement, of police operations in academic spaces. Strategically contrasted with SYRIZA’s opposition to police interventions, this incident is given a political twist, implying SYRIZA’s tolerance of such actions in ‘Podemos’ Spain’ and holding it, therefore, accountable for inconsistent politics.

Police intervention within universities emerges as the main stake⁷ of Georgiades’s position. In 2021, ND legislated the creation of a ‘university police’ force, although this policy has not been implemented. Emphasis on Hasél’s charges (Line 2) serves to justify the necessity of such an institution and to legitimize broader police intervention. Podemos is constructed as a basic example of responsible governance, suggesting that even left-wing governments can translate their doctrines into concrete policies and interventions, exercising state power when necessary. Such decisions (and policies) are treated as imperative responses to disorder in contexts where security issues are at stake, thereby positioning SYRIZA’s stance as more of an accountable exception rather than representative of left-wing governance.

By referencing authoritative institutions, practices and broader security concerns (i.e., ‘the police’, legal ‘conviction’, and ‘terrorism’, Lines 1-2), Georgiades claims legitimacy for his position while constructing an ‘undeniable’ link between SYRIZA and Podemos. In doing so, he indirectly castigates SYRIZA, positioning it in opposition to the international political left with which it is otherwise affiliated. By stressing the Spanish left’s supposed willingness to deploy police within universities, this argument strengthens the legitimacy of ND’s policies, while presenting SYRIZA as a deviant political actor, both in relation to the broader political left and to the local political right, and as departing from the supposed international principles of rational governance invoked as necessary for managing security threats, such as terrorism.

Georgiades’ concluding statement (‘somewhere here the entire discussion of last week by Syriza ended’, Lines 2-3) employs an extreme case formulation (Pomerantz, 1986) to further accuse SYRIZA of hypocrisy, inconsistency, or inability to pragmatically address contemporary governance challenges. His account advances a sustained critique of SYRIZA’s allegedly unsubstantiated political positions, portraying it as lacking a serious political presence. He highlights a contradiction whereby the local left’s vocal opposition to ND’s proposed policies vanishes when similar or stricter measures are implemented by far-left political actors such as Podemos, illustrating that SYRIZA’s opposition to authoritarian measures becomes selectively muted depending on who enforces them. Therefore, Georgiades’ account serves a dual rhetorical purpose: not only does he undermine the legitimacy of SYRIZA’s opposition, but he also enhances his party’s position and policies. The alignment of ND’s policy positions with Podemos’ alleged practices constructs police intervention in universities as a reasonable, realistic, internationally validated, and ideologically neutral policy measure.

Georgiades manages a broader ideological dilemma regarding state power (maintaining security) versus institutional freedom and autonomy (see, Billig et al., 1988, pp. 34-42), as articulated in both local and international debates. The portrayal of the international political left as complicit in similar practices undermines the moral authority of the Greek political left, challenging its opposition, and ultimately contributing to the construction of SYRIZA’s authoritarian image.

Overall, the first argumentative line negatively links SYRIZA’s politics with foreign governments and regimes constructed as ideologically rigid, thereby delegitimizing the Greek political left as an extreme exception. Occidentalist cultural comparisons (Bozatzis, 2009, 2014) are mobilized to deconstruct SYRIZA's policy positions, specifically its opposition to private universities and policing, as outdated and dogmatic, pointing to its alleged deviation from standard norms of Western governance. This depiction is further reinforced through the strategic use of figures such as Maduro and Podemos, who are presented as comparatively ‘reasonable’ and politically superior to SYRIZA. Constructing the local left as an isolated case, even in relation to international counterparts, reinforces the legitimacy of ND's position as the only realistic political alternative, entrenching a polarizing (self-/other-) positioning that legitimizes ND against what is rendered as an ‘absurd local left’.

Associating SYRIZA With Authoritarian ‘Others’: The Local Realization of a Broader Authoritarian Paradigm Instigated by the International Political Left

The second argumentative line represents SYRIZA as the local manifestation of a broader, ‘universal’ authoritarian paradigm associated with the political left. By identifying SYRIZA with ‘Soviet doctrines’ and figures such as Maduro and Putin, it mainly deploys the representational modality of extended ideological contamination within the LWA repertoire to construct a picture of an underlying ‘threat’ to democracy. It draws extensively on geopolitical analogies and vivid metaphors to castigate SYRIZA as politically and morally alienated from modern politics through its associations with a discredited, historical and contemporary, left-wing authoritarian legacy. Political epochs, symbols, and international figures constructed as archetypal authoritarians are thus mobilized to attribute authoritarianism to the local political left. SYRIZA emerges as an ideologically backward and compromised political actor, positioned within a broader and threatening authoritarian political current.

The following post by Hatzidakis, who, as indicated above, is a prominent MP and member of ND’s government, draws on (a-)historical resources and selective references to policymaking to formulate a generalized censure of left-wing ideology, accusing the local left of anchoring itself in an outdated ideological dogma.

Hatzidakis uses a vivid metaphor (Edwards & Potter, 1992, p. 161; Potter, 1996, pp. 80-81), ‘cobweb-covered, Soviet doctrines’ (Line 1), depicting left-wing politics as inflexible and rooted in a rigid doctrine trapped in the past. This image establishes a close ideological association between Soviet-era communism and the local political left, signaling contemporary irrelevance and persistent dogmatism. His statement claims facticity by drawing on a seemingly shared socio-historical representation of the Soviet era, attributing key authoritarian features to his political opponent’s ideology. In this way, Hatzidakis emphasizes the left’s alleged doctrinal rigidity, linked to the negative connotations of the Soviet legacy, thereby reinforcing a particular ideological understanding within the broader socio-political debate.

Hatzidakis broadly delegitimizes the political left by associating it with a discredited historical era, accusing it of holding failed, insincere, and extreme ideological positions. Left-wing ideology is explicitly constituted as an outdated relic, lacking in pragmatic and social relevance for modern societies. By relating SYRIZA to the Soviet Union and, thus, to its implied authoritarianism, Hatzidakis’ argument orients, rhetorically-ideologically, to the political and cultural alienation of the left. Following this claim, a somewhat inconsistent rhetoric—based on largely unsubstantiated allegations—is articulated for partisan purposes. ND’s political opponents are portrayed as incapable of adapting to modern political challenges, with the left’s ideological basis described as ‘paralyzing’ it (Line 1), thereby generalizing and distorting the diversity of left-wing politics.

Subsequently, Hatzidakis questions the political left’s opposition to ‘Hatzidakis law’ (Line 2), selectively listing reforms as concrete evidence of ND’s progressive achievements (Lines 3-5). He constructs a stark contrast between ND’s politics, presented as genuinely emancipatory and pragmatic, and left-wing opposition, attributed to the ideological fixation on an outdated political model. The use of ‘they’/’we’ formulations (Lines 5-6) enhances this censure, castigating the political left for ideological blindness, while claiming ND’s pragmatic orientation and moral superiority (Figgou & Andreouli, 2023). This binary positioning, rooted in partisanship, rather than engagement with SYRIZA’s policy proposals, contrasts the opponents’ alleged backwardness and unconstructive stance with the higher-order politics of the speaker’s camp, thereby promoting ND’s socio-political legitimacy and effectiveness.

Extract 4 presents a post of Makis Voridis, a prominent Greek MP and minister, previously also affiliated with the far-right LAOS party. At the time of sharing this post, he was a senior ND politician and has since served as Minister for Migration and Asylum, as well as Minister in the Interior, Health, and Rural Development. The post was published in May 2019, while the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition, led by Tsipras, was still in government.

Voridis leverages May Day symbolisms to project ND’s solidarity with Venezuelans’ democratic struggle against Maduro’s left-wing government (Lines 1-2), delegitimizing him as an authoritarian oppressor (cf. the first argumentative line). By instrumentalizing May Day within the particular, contemporary, culturally specific context, he shifts its meaning from working-class struggles to Venezuela’s political unrest, portraying the Venezuelan opposition as the true heirs of democracy and Maduro’s regime as ‘leftist authoritarian’ (Line 2). This rhetoric illustrates a flexible use of ideological symbols in order to oppose both the Venezuelan political left and the then SYRIZA-led government. Having constructed Maduro as the leader of an authoritarian regime, Voridis refers to him as ‘the friend of Alexis Tsipras’ (Line 3)⁸. This localizes the LWA censure through an explicitly personalized and implicitly ideological connection between SYRIZA’s leader and the Venezuelan regime (Line 3), effectively attributing guilt by association.

The invocation of a specific political date (May Day, Line 1) and the normative valorization of ‘Freedom Fighters’ (Lines 1-2) are utilized as indisputable facts to construct Maduro’s regime as ‘leftist authoritarian’, while simultaneously associating Tsipras with it. In this way, left-wing political actors are constructed as inherently interconnected and indistinguishably authoritarian. This account establishes a binary that aligns ND with democratic resistance, positioning it as the supporter of freedom struggles, while the local left is represented as sympathetic to authoritarianism. The next extract similarly aligns the local left with international authoritarian figures, further delegitimizing SYRIZA as morally compromised and, in this case, as operating under Russia’s influence. It was posted by Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, a former politician, who, at the time, was an MP serving as Alternate Minister for Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy within an ND government.

Varvitsiotis portrays SYRIZA as willfully ignorant on the particulars of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, utilizing rhetorical incredulity and irony to castigate the left for its lack of political clarity and democratic morals. Through a ‘we’ formulation (Line 1), he positions himself and his party as informed democratic political actors, while constructing the local left as either complicit in or dangerously indifferent to authoritarianism.

The moral delegitimization of SYRIZA is advanced through an accusation of deliberate political blindness and irresponsibility (Line 1). By asserting the war is ‘a personal choice of Mr. Putin’ (Lines 1-2), the MP effectively constructs a self-contained (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, pp. 177, 186-187) moral narrative, holding not only Putin accountable for actions that contradict the values of democracy and freedom (as shared principles of Greece and European/Western countries), but also SYRIZA for, allegedly, tolerating them. Varvitsiotis invokes a foundational liberal-democratic versus authoritarian-undemocratic dichotomy, representing authoritarianism as the antithesis of universally cherished political values (Lines 2-3). The focus lies in mobilizing this authoritarian figure (Putin) to criticize the left for failing to recognize or condemn this threat to democracy and human rights, thereby questioning its ideological and political integrity. The invocation of democratic values and anti-authoritarianism provides this account with rationality through recourse to seemingly self-evident political morals. This, in turn, reinforces proximal local political boundaries between the right and the left by challenging the legitimacy and credibility of SYRIZA’s positions on international affairs, once again constructing it as sympathetic to authoritarian leaders such as Putin, in contrast to ND.

The following post also delegitimizes SYRIZA by arguing for its moral and political deviation through alleged malign economic relations with Russia. This was posted by Adonis Georgiades, who, as noted, is a prominent political figure of ND.

Georgiades’ post is marked by ironic intent (Line 1) and is supported by the invocation of precise numerical data and references to the European Parliament (Lines 1-4). These provide facticity to his censure against SYRIZA as unethically negligent towards war crimes and cast aspersions on its alleged political corruption and complicity. His construction achieves the ideological ‘othering’ of SYRIZA while positioning himself and ND as a moral democratic political force.

Georgiades cites precise numbers of MEPs who participated in a vote concerning the establishment of a special court against Putin and Lukashenko, as well as those who abstained or voted against, indicating the presence of four SYRIZA MEPs among the latter (Lines 1-4); this citatiοn of precise numbers enhances the projected objectivity and credibility of his argument (see, Billig, 2021). By selectively emphasizing, therefore particularizing, those Greek left-wing politicians within a broader European political group, Georgiades intensifies SYRIZA’s perceived deviance, as an unethical political exception, as a political institution that supports Putin’s regime. But Georgiades’ charge reaches further than that by suggesting, shadowy relations between them. He mobilizes suspicion through innuendo directed at SYRIZA and its MEPs, without, however, explicitly accusing them of being under undue financial influence from Russia (Lines 4-5); still, his account introduces distrust and positions the political left as a threat to shared democratic values and morals. This particularized focus, then, reinforces a broader narrative around SYRIZA’s allegedly questionable commitment to universal democratic and ethical principles.

Drawing on the repertoire’s representational modality of extended ideological contamination, the second argumentative line advances a comprehensive political censure of SYRIZA by associating it with widely discredited authoritarian international actors. Rhetorical analogies referencing Maduro’s ‘regime’ and the war actions of Putin function as strategies of blame-by-association, delegitimizing the local political left. The linkage with authoritarian figures, combined with strategic positioning, consolidates SYRIZA’s delegitimization while promoting ND as the moral and ideological defender of democratic values.

Entrenching SYRIZA’s ‘Exceptionalism’: Authoritarian Left-Wing Governance Harboring Deep-State Structures

Invoking the interpretative repertoire’s representational modality of state authoritarianism in practice, the third argumentative line extends the previous ideological critique to articulate a direct LWA censure against left-wing governance. It directly equates SYRIZA’S former administration with the shadowy practices of an authoritarian deep-state⁹, stressing its alleged involvement in illegal surveillance¹⁰. By accusing SYRIZA of authoritarian practices, this argument fundamentally challenges the previous government’s integrity, entrenching the construction of the Greek political left as an actual authoritarian threat to democracy.

The following extract was posted by Constantinos Bogdanos, a journalist and politician who served as an ND MP from 2019 until 2021. He associates SYRIZA with authoritarianism, suggesting that left-wing governance entails overreach that leads to a crisis of democracy.

In this post, Bogdanos foregrounds an allegation regarding the direct involvement of a left-wing political authority in actions associated with the authoritarian suppression of dissent. His argument implicates the spouse of a central government officer commanding, allegedly, police intervention, namely the arrest of two journalists (Lines 1-2). The mention of ‘physical surveillance and everything that has been recorded’ (Lines 3-4), designated as practices that ‘refer only to authoritarian regimes’ (Line 4), mobilizes an analogical comparison between the SYRIZA-led government and broadly recognized forms of authoritarian political practice. This alleged targeting of journalists, treated here as a hallmark of authoritarianism, alludes to documented practices used to control public discourse and suppress opposition, ultimately restricting civil rights and press freedom. Thus, the delegitimization of the left-wing government is performed by positioning it far beyond the limits of acceptable democratic governance.

Even though Bogdanos implicates Tsipras’ complicity and attributes undemocratic transgressions to the local political left, he stops short of issuing a direct censure. The use of consequent rhetorical questions (Lines 4-5), together with the preceding vague formulation (Edwards & Potter, 1992, p. 162) (‘everything…recorded’, Line 3) allows Bogdanos to avoid direct accusations, given the lack of concrete evidence, thereby managing his accountability for the claims he advances. These rhetorical questions intensify the accusatory tone of his argument, shifting focus from a broader institutional censure regarding LWA to a more particularized and personalized accusation against Tsipras, thereby holding him personally accountable for alleged authoritarian practices. Bogdanos thus implies left-wing complicity and speculates on active support toward undemocratic, illegal deep-state structures. He consistently invokes the notion of a ‘deep-state’ (Line 4) amplifying a sense of subverted democratic normality and inviting audiences to question the legitimacy and integrity of Tsipras’ leadership.

Bogdanos explicitly constructs the regulation of political power as a sine qua non condition of modern democratic politics, establishing a normative standard against which the SYRIZA-ANEL government is evaluated and held accountable. Extract 8, below, presents a post shared by Dora Bakoyannis, a senior ND politician with longstanding influence in Greek politics, former Foreign Minister, former Mayor of Athens, and the sister of ND leader and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Bakoyannis appeals to self-evident democratic norms (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, pp. 177, 186-187) to construct a general claim, stressing the necessity of regulating the democratic boundaries of politics, with emphasis on constraints on political power (‘There are…politics’, Line 1). She then attributes responsibility to the former SYRIZA-ANEL government for bypassing these fundamental democratic prerequisites. She further provides facticity to this censure through the use of vagueness (Edwards & Potter, 1992, p. 162), making general references to recent revelations as indicative of LWA without specifying the allegations, thereby managing accountability (Lines 1-2). She also employs absolute expressions (‘there were no….There was no…’, Lines 2-3), which function as extreme case formulations (Pomerantz, 1986), implying unchecked exercise of power. In this way, she justifies the described transgression of political ‘boundaries’ (Line 2), which, together with the absence of ‘democratic accountability’ (Line 3), portrays the SYRIZA-led government as a violator of safeguards of democracy. Bakoyannis, thus directly delegitimizes the SYRIZA-led administration as a threat to democratic order, while positioning ND as a guardian of democracy.

What follows is not merely a censure but a culmination of ND’s portrayal of the SYRIZA-ANEL government as embodying both the characteristics of a ‘deep-state’ (Line 3) and the operational logic of an ‘authoritarian regime’ (Line 4). This rhetorical intensification reinforces ND’s broader strategy of censure by construing the left-wing government as inherently authoritarian, rendering its political opposition to a defense of legitimate democratic order. The convergence of these charges marks a peak in the construction of SYRIZA-ANEL as a dual threat, both covertly manipulative (‘deep-state’) and overtly authoritarian. In contrast to the previous extract, which utilized analogies, Bakoyannis directly associates the political left with illegitimate power structures that operate outside the range of legitimate governance. In this context, Bakoyannis, through an overall vague argument (Edwards & Potter, 1992, p. 162), invokes historically and culturally entrenched resources, mainly left unspecified, to construct the political conditions shaped by the former SYRIZA-ANEL policies as an undeniable breach of essentialized democratic norms. This account is, therefore, both grounded in and simultaneously promotes a hegemonic public discourse around SYRIZA's authoritarian practices, supported by supposedly recently disclosed yet unspecified revelations. As ND had already assumed governance at the time of the post, the local political right emerges in this account as entitled to uphold and enforce necessary limits to restore and maintain democratic political order.

The final argumentative line represents a high-stakes mobilization of the LWA interpretative repertoire, centered on state authoritarianism in practice as evidenced in actual left-wing governance. Equating the SYRIZA-ANEL government’s actions with an authoritarian ‘deep-state’ and criticizing, forcefully, SYRIZA for alleged involvement in illegal surveillance and the suppression of freedom of speech, ND’s MPs cement SYRIZA’s authoritarian depiction. This rhetorical-ideological objective is achieved through vague claims to recent ‘events’ and ‘revelations’, designed to stress the adversary’s supposed democratic deficits. Subtle accountability management practices facilitate the narrative construction of SYRIZA-led governance as a breakdown of democracy, while simultaneously validating ND’s claimed position of the sole local source of political integrity.