Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning body of political science research on the radical right, as the rise of radical right parties has become an important phenomenon in current global politics. However, existing research focuses on the label of populism and lacks a systematic linguistic analysis of the underlying logic or the core ideological clusters of radical right parties. As Lakoff (Reference Lakoff1990: 3) observes, language is not neutral; language is always political. In this context, van Dijk’s Discourse and Ideologies of the Radical Right makes a significant contribution by foregrounding the role of language in the cognitive construction and discursive realization of ideology. Based on his long-term research in critical discourse analysis and social cognition, van Dijk develops a multidisciplinary framework that integrates ideology, cognition, and discourse analysis. Then he conducts a comparative analysis of election programs by radical right parties in Chile, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, illustrating how ideological meanings are linguistically structured and strategically adapted to specific sociopolitical contexts. Central to this framework is the concept of ideological clusters—these are dynamic, contextually adaptive cognitive-discursive configurations of interlocking ideologies (nationalism, racism, Catholic conservatism) that are systematically realized across multiple levels of linguistic organization: the global topics of a text, lexical choice, syntactic structure, rhetorical tropes, argumentative topoi and pragmatic polarization. This concept provides a theoretical perspective for analyzing the language-ideology interface in contemporary political discourse.

In the chapter outlining the theoretical framework, van Dijk has updated and integrated his ideological theory over the years, with the core argument being that ideology is not a vague thought, but a structured cognitive system shared by social groups. Michael Billig pointed out, ‘The most successful ideologies are those which do not appear to be ideological at all, but taken for granted as expressing the way things are’ (Billig Reference Billig1995: 68). This echoes van Dijk’s emphasis on ideology as a deep cognitive structure. Crucially, ideology is structurally polarized, namely, the opposition between us (the in-group) and them (the out-group). This cognitive polarization structure is directly reflected in language as van Dijk’s ideological clusters strategy: emphasizing our good deeds and their bad deeds, downplaying our bad deeds and their good deeds.

As an official discourse genre, election programs serve as the most ideal text for observing these ideological and linguistic strategies as they systematically express the core ideology and attitudes of the political party. Van Dijk analyses and compares the election programs of radical right parties in Chile, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The comparative analysis focuses on two variables: (1) ideological cluster variables: the composition, hierarchical priority, and core attitudes of each party’s ideological configuration; (2) linguistic variables: lexical-semantic choices (evaluative words, categorization, highlighting), syntactic devices (absolute intensification, causal linking), rhetorical strategies (metaphor, polarization), pragmatic variables (context, communicative goals, addressees, politeness and deference). This analysis reveals that the ideologies of radical right parties will be strategically adjusted, combined and expressed according to the specific political, economic, cultural and historical backgrounds of each country, in order to fully meet the emotional demands and political realities of local voters, thereby winning support. In Chile, a country with a strong Catholic tradition, the Republican Party’s election programs employ a hyperbolic rhetorical structure with absolute intensification such as ‘being absolutely opposed to abortion in all its forms, euthanasia, or any action that directly seeks the artificial interruption of human life’. The adverb absolutely, phrase in all its forms and without exceptions function to eliminate semantic ambiguity and negotiable space, rather than merely expressing religious sentiment or referencing a religious topic. These formal linguistic choices encode Catholic ideological absolutism to mobilize conservative voters. In Spain, which is facing the challenge of separatism and regionalism, Vox adopts a distinctly confrontational rhetoric, mobilizing nationalist sentiment by simplifying complex political confrontation into an attack of the opponent consisting of serious accusations, through statements like ‘his concessions to separatism and his commitment to a multilevel Spain has only benefited the regional elites and has allowed the consolidation of an unjust model that hampers the prosperity and welfare of the Spanish people’. In the Netherlands, where the welfare system is mature, the Party for Freedom (PVV) utilizes catastrophic metaphors such as ‘Our beautiful Netherlands has been severely degraded by the constant asylum tsunami and mass immigration’ to portray the immigration issue as a direct threat to national well-being, accurately triggering public anxiety about economic and cultural security. As Lakoff (Reference Lakoff2002: 113) emphasizes, the metaphors in political discourse are not merely figures of speech, but also define how we think about politics. In Sweden, renowned for its safety and order, the Democratic Party has attributed social disorder directly to immigrants through a causal oversimplification, such as ‘A new brutal gang culture has hit Sweden as a result of the immigration policy’, paving the way for its tough policies emphasizing law and order. This comparative analysis demonstrates that the success of these political parties lies in their ability to transform their core ideology into a localized discourse that resonates with the most prominent social anxieties in their country, thereby achieving effective political mobilization.

Van Dijk concludes by summarizing the theoretical and empirical findings of this study. The multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrates ideology, cognition, discourse and social context. The comparative analysis of the four countries reveals that the radical right ideology is a reactionary backlash against the cultural revolution since the 1960s. Van Dijk reinterprets this cultural backlash as a set of context-specific discursive practices through a discourse-cognitive analysis: in Catholic Chile and Spain, ideological clusters center on Catholic conservatism, anti-abortion, and traditional family values encoded via formal and absolute language; in secular Netherlands and Sweden, ideological clusters prioritize nativism, anti-immigration through rhetoric such as flood metaphors and causal oversimplification. Each is adapted to local cultural consensus and political divisions. The study also presents the different radical right ideological clusters with discursive strategies to adapt to different economic, cultural, political, and historical contexts.

The book has many innovations. Firstly, this book proposes the concept of ideological clusters, a variable ideological structure that adapts to different sociopolitical contexts in different countries. This concept provides a key to interpreting flexible and variable policy combinations. This book also constructs a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that systematically analyzes the political strategies of the radical right from three levels: ideological clusters, linguistic expressions and sociopolitical context. This framework not only reveals how the radical right activates group identity through the exclusive narrative of nativism, but also unifies seemingly contradictory policies under the core logic of defending tradition, providing a universal analytical tool for cross-cultural comparisons.

Methodologically, the most prominent feature is the selection of four countries with diverse national contexts: Chile, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, for comparative analysis. This design not only demonstrates the unique political and cultural backgrounds of each country but also clearly reveals the common ideological logic of the radical right, which is to adjust the targets of their attacks based on the most sensitive social pain points in the local area. As Wodak (Reference Wodak2009: 9) points out, discourse must be studied in its social and historical context. Meaning is created in interaction and in specific settings, which need to be taken into account when analyzing discourse data. This comparison not only breaks the stereotype that the radical right is a single and homogeneous ideology, but also vividly validates the notion of dynamic combinations of ideological clusters presented in the book.

However, this book also has certain limitations. Although the four countries exhibit considerable diversity in political, economic, and cultural contexts, effectively illustrating the contextual adaptability of ideological clusters, their geographical and cultural scope remains largely confined to Europe and countries with strong European cultural ties. The analysis does not extend to other significant regions where radical right movements have also gained traction, including the United States, East Asia, or Eastern Europe. It should be noted, however, that van Dijk does not explicitly claim global generalizability for his findings. Therefore, this limitation does not undermine the internal validity of his theoretical framework. Rather, it opens up a productive avenue for future research—namely, applying the ideological clusters model to non-European contexts to test its cross-cultural explanatory power and further refine its analytical parameters.

From the linguistic perspective, the book offers valuable insights into how ideological clusters are linguistically structured, strategically activated, and contextually adapted in political discourse. By integrating ideology, social cognition, and discourse analysis, van Dijk provides a robust framework for examining the language-ideology interface across different sociopolitical contexts. As such, the book not only contributes to critical discourse analysis but also invites further linguistic research into the discursive mechanisms through which ideological clusters are produced, stabilized, and contested in contemporary political communication.