On “The Long March Through the Institutions”. A Brief History of Populist Phrase Used as a Base for Social Transformation in the Context of Political Communication
On “The Long March Through the Institutions”. A Brief History of Populist Phrase Used as a Base for Social Transformation in the Context of Political Communication

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to carry out a communicological analysis of a specific phrase: “the long march through the institutions”. The phrase was used by the leader of the ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, in January 2018. The author analyses who and in what circumstances used this “modus operandi”, and identifies reasons that make the phrase a tool of populist political communication. The analysed phrase also represents a starting point for considering how communication strategies are selected by the leader of Law and Justice. The text contains an overview and represents a contribution to in-depth research into political communication, populism and propaganda in the public sphere immersed in the media – MediaPolis. The author wishes to draw attention to interesting evolution of populism towards an important tool of political communication, and undertakes a case study of an utterance of the leader of Poland’s ruling party. The research questions put in the study aim to examine a convention characteristic of populism: interchangeable treatment of conceptual apparatuses of ethical (axiological) and pragmatic discourses. Those paradigms, though originating from differ-ent world views, coincide in one political reality. The metaphor of march becomes a perfect synonym of change without the need to precisely define its direction and necessity. The study contributes to initiating a wider debate on populist political communication in Poland.

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