AJİTASYON VE SİYASAL ÖZNELLİĞİN İNŞASI: ADORNO’NUN FAŞİZM ANALİZİ BAĞLAMINDA ÜMİT ÖZDAĞ’IN KONUŞMALARI
AGITATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY: UMIT OZDAG’S SPEECHES IN THE CONTEXT OF ADORNO’S ANALYSIS OF FASCISM

Summary/Abstract: Adorno carried out a socio-psychological analysis of Martin Luther Thomas, an agitator who preached in church and radio in the USA in the 1930s. In this study, the discourses of Victory Party Chairman Umit Ozdag between August 26, 2021 and June 6, 2023 are analyzed in the context of the concept of neo-fascism with the socio-psychological methodology proposed by Adorno. Ozdag’s tweets, live broadcast speeches, short films, and constituent texts related to his party were included in the study. The study aims to show the psychological techniques with which Ozdag constructs his rhetoric and to discuss them in an ideological context. Adorno, who identified more than thirty psychologically-based techniques, divided agitational speech, which functions with various strategies in line with the framework of analysis he developed, into four main themes: “The personal element, Thomas’s method, the religious medium and ideological bait”. In this study, Ozdag’s specific political rhetoric is analyzed under Adorno’s first two headings and in the context of his 10 techniques: “Lone wolf, emotional release, persecuted innocence, indefatigability, a great little man, if only you knew, dirty linen, tingling back-bone, last hour and exactitude of error”. As a result of the study, it was concluded that Ozdag tends to adopt a style of politics that utilises irrational elements by emphasising certain personality traits such as sincerity, courage, and enthusiasm, and to determine the method itself as the goal rather than the content. In the context of neo-fascism, it has been revealed that the discourses related to ethno-pluralism and the right to difference approaches have been put forward as the main defense of its policy towards asylum seekers.

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