“We Have to Stop Islam, or Say Goodbye to Civilisation”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Pegida Canada Facebook Page

With Gul Caliskan | Published 2022-07-05

Abstract

The Western world has witnessed an enormous rise of exclusionary populism; some of it expressed by politicians, and much of it promoted by online extremist groups. The Internet can be seen as a suitable medium for delivering hate speech anonymously and without penalty. Such hate speech encourages fear and hatred towards Muslims. Contemporary anti-Muslim racism has its roots in colonialism and Orientalist ideology. Although hate crimes are thought of as being physical and in-person, they often involve public speech, much of which now happens online. In the Canadian context, hate speech has gained public expression with the emergence of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) and through the growth of online groups that advocate the exclusion of non-white or non-Western people, especially Muslims. Using critical discourse analysis, we analyze the expressions of such sentiments on the Facebook page of Pegida Canada. We consider how the group’s Facebook presence contributes to anti-Muslim racism and what this tells us about the rise of exclusionary populism.