ABSTRACT
The year 2016 was full of shocking events in the old continent. On 22 March, 32 people were killed in attacks at Brussels airport and Maalbeek underground station. On 18 April, over 400 migrants and refugees died in the Mediterranean trying to make it into Italy from Egypt. In Austria, a gunman killed two and wounded 11 people in an open-air concert. On 23 June, the UK voted to leave the EU. Jo Cox, a Labour MP, had been shot dead. Abts and Rummens maintain that right-wing populism blames the intellectual, economic and political elites for abusing their positions of power and influence, and ignoring the people. The European project that is, the EU, and Brexit are the top two most significant individual keywords in the corpus. Brexit is seen as being damaging to punch-drunk EU and to the interests of senior officials.
