Brussels – boss, bully or the big brother?

According to political realism, conflict is animmanent feature of world politics (Morgenthau 1948/1973). Drawing on thisbasic premise, it can be expected that the conflictframe is routinely exploited by politicians to explain and justify theirforeign policy (Musolff 2016). Conflict is especially prevalent in populistnarratives, where the “pure people” are juxtaposed with the “corrupt elite”(Mudde 2004). Accordingly, we hypothesized that the current Hungarian populistgovernment would also frame its turbulent relationship with the EU bymetaphorically conceptualizing it as a violent conflict. Drawing on a discoursedynamics approach to metaphor identification (Cameron et al. 2009; 2010), weanalysed the metaphorical framing of the term Brüsszel (‘Brussels’) found in articles published on officialgovernment websites between 2015 and 2017. Our results indicate that explicitmanifestation of the conflictframe in the form of violent conflict (such as a military operation) is lessprevalent in contemporary government rhetoric, as opposed to the eu as person frame. This latterconceptualization, however, is manifested by metaphorical scenarios that evokeconflictual relations with varying degrees (and thus feed into populistnarratives) by making sense of the EU as an authority figure, a partner in ajoint venture, a bully, and an opponent in a battle.