The Grammar of Betrayal: Illiberal Conspiracy Tropes in Slovak Political Rhetoric

Pavol Hardoš
Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University of Bratislava

Slovak political discourse has seen a resurgence of illiberal rhetoric that weaponizes conspiracy theories against the pluralist foundations of a democratic society. This talk will draw on cultural studies, political science, and semiotic approaches to conspiracy theories and analyze conspiracy theories as meaning-making templates that can articulate conflict and generate meaning. Under conditions of social stress, conspiracy theories function as a mythological model organizing events and facts around a plot motivated by evil forces. As such, conspiracy theories can be weaponized by political actors as narrative instruments that organize social processes as an antagonistic struggle of “us” versus “them”. They are powerful ideological tools of Othering, that posit a threat to the community, that is being advanced both externally and from within. Based on this framing, the talk will then explore how Slovak nationalist and far-right political actors have rearticulated older nationalist motifs around new “ideological specters”, specifically targeting progressive liberalism, “gender ideology”, and LGBTQ+ rights as threats to the nation. By examining the persistence of specific narrative tropes, the talk will demonstrate how the current illiberal conspiracy discourse draws upon and reinforces longstanding Slovak ideological traditions of “victimhood nationalism” and anti-Western resentment, where the Slovak nation repeatedly faces hidden, foreign, malevolent forces working against it. Finally, the talk will examine how such political myths can operate as instruments of autocratization, by both eroding epistemic authority and polarizing the public sphere through the strategic framing of internal betrayal.

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