The Populist Brand of Love Australia or Leave: A Corpus-Based Investigation of Antipodean Populism

This paper explores the production, promulgation and uptake of the ideologies and discourses of Love Australia or Leave, a small, peripheral, right-wing populist party in Australia. It applies corpus analysis and discourse analysis to 95 blog entries posted to the party’s website and comments on the party’s Facebook page to investigate: 1) the main themes and ideologies put forth by the party and how they are structured and articulated; 2) the extent to which the selected content produced by Love Australia or Leave exhibits distinctive features of Antipodean populism; and 3) the representation and uptake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a contentious global issue. Findings of this article shed light on the party’s ideologies and the mechanisms by which the party seeks legitimisation and unveils its platform both overtly and covertly, and casts doubt on the independence and isolationism of this party with respect to other global movements and contexts.