Irony as a Political Demarcation Tool of the New Russian Nationalists

Abstract

The article discusses how and why the new nationalists, who call for political self-determination of Russians but share some ideological concepts with liberals, use stiob – form of ironic parody based on overidentification and decontextualisation, resulting in destruction of the authoritative discourse. Their entertaining, or educational-cumentertaining projects located in the gray area between politics and counterculture strive to undermine domineering political discourses (liberal, neo-Soviet, leftist, official patriotic and old nationalist) and to go beyond the left-right dichotomy. The author concludes that the main function of stiob and other forms of irony for the new nationalists is negative identification. Ambivalence of the language of stiob simultaneously attracts the target audience of nationalists (“those in the know”) and does not prevent solidarizing with any political platform when needed. The article is based on qualitative analysis of narratives produced by nationalist social media influencers, including fiction, essays, talks, lectures, interviews, live broadcasts, posts in blogs, social networks and messengers.