ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces the analytical framework of a populist security imaginary. It advances the study of populism and ontological security in International Relations by linking the critical analysis of identity performing discourses and security narratives to emotive appeals and psychological effects aimed at specific target audiences and their underlying cultural attitudes, social orientation, and political values. The chapter introduces the key concepts of ontological security, blame attribution, emotionalization, and collective narcissism and integrates them into a comprehensive research design. The intertextual analysis of the content of political communication includes presidential speeches, official documents, interviews, and social media posts as well as the mutual reinforcement and contestation of the populist security imaginary between politics and media, highlighting the significance of competing truth claims in the construction of political and social reality. The chapter will describe how framing and narrative offer conceptual avenues to examine the psychological and affective modes of political persuasion in populist rhetoric, and how blame attribution, appeals to collective narcissism, and an affective repertoire of fear, anxiety, humiliation, resentment, and nostalgia are employed for the purposes of voter mobilization and the legitimation of policy.
