Bulgarian Anti-Democratic Propaganda: Talking Points, Styles and Audiences
Bulgarian Anti-Democratic Propaganda: Talking Points, Styles and Audiences

Summary/Abstract: This paper is part of the research project on Anti-Liberal Discourses and Propaganda Messages in Bulgarian Media: Dissemination and Social Perception in the period between 2013 and 2016. It presents a case study focusing on differences in styles and public discourses with reference to their audiences in the advancing process of disseminating three main talking points of present-day Bulgarian anti-democratic propaganda: 1. ‘Bulgaria’s venal elites’; 2. ‘The decline of the West/Europe’; and 3. ‘The rise of Russia’. The case study focuses on two types of public propaganda speakers – ‘people’s tribunes’ (Alexander Simov, Kevork Kevorkyan), and ‘thinkers’ targeting a more sophisticated and almost academic audience (Dr Nikolay Mihaylov, Prof. Ivo Hristov). The analysis frames their political viewpoints: Simov’s Stalinist attitude, with discursive formulations coming from the 1950s; Kevorkyan’s thoroughly xenophobic and nationalistic attitude; Mihaylov’s and Hristov’s claims regarding the ‘artificial’ character of the Modern Era and liberalism, as op- posed to the ‘natural’ character of Russian authoritarianism. The paper also pays attention to the different rhetorical devices of their propaganda style: the special use of catachresis as a total trope of the discourse, which conflates all possible talking and focal points, plots and themes into one and the same political mes- sage whose rhetorical and topical ingredients seem to collapse into a consequent synonymy (Alexander Simov); the use of ‘manifesto-like’ or ‘slogan-like’ short paragraphs and meaningful artificial capital letters of nouns and verbs in Kevork Kevorkyan’s sentences; the special use of prestigious quotes (most often mistaken and mistreated) in Dr Nikolay Mihaylov’s and Prof. Ivo Hristov’s discourses, etc.

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