“Everything goes against the German here!” : self-victimising discourse in comments on migration-related posts on the Alternative für Deutschland Facebook page

Abstract/Summary

This chapter investigates user comments on migration-related posts on the Facebook page of the far-right German political party Alternative für Deutschland. After a conceptualising discussion of hate speech online and a contextualising description of the Alternative für Deutschland and its Facebook presence, user comments on nine migration-related Facebook posts are investigated in a qualitative discourse analytical framework. The chapter demonstrates by way of a contextualised discourse analysis how a range of recurrent topoi of immigrants as burden, danger, exploitation and injustice and specific recurring features, including expressions of physical revulsion and sarcasm, combine to form a discourse of self-victimisation in the user comments. Thes findings will be discussed in the light of a need for contextualised discourse analyses of hate speech beyond the use of derogatory terms that considers a range of recurrent features in combination.