Anger, social polarization and middle class in
Las Mañaneras
of
López Obrador
Odio, polarización social y clase media en Las Mañaneras de López Obrador
doxa.comunicación |
nº 35, pp. 83-96
| 83
July-December of 2022
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Ramírez Plascencia, D.; Alonzo González, R. M. and Ochoa Amezquita, A. (2022). Anger, social polarization and middle class in
Las
Mañaneras
of López Obrador.
Doxa Comunicación
, 35, pp. 83-96.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n35a1505
David Ramírez Plascencia
is a professor and researcher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Law (2002) and a master’s
degree in Political Science (2006) from the University of Guadalajara, as well as a doctoral degree in Social Sciences
from the College of Jalisco (2013). Professor Ramírez is a full-time researcher and teaches subjects related with new
information and communication technologies and their impact on society at the University of Guadalajara. He coor
-
dinated the University of Guadalajara’s master’s degree in Public Management in Virtual Environments and founded
Paakat: Journal of Technology and Society. He has published essays and articles on technology and society and is a
member of the National Research System of Mexico (
Sistema Nacional de Investigadores
, SNI), Level 1
.
University of Guadalajara, Mexico
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0003-3287-8769
Rosa María Alonzo González
. PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Colima. She is currently a member
level 1 of the National System of Researchers (SNI) and aliated to the University of Guadalajara where she is doing
postdoctoral research for CONACYT at the University Center of the South and collaborates with the University of
Colima in Agorante, a research group in society and technology. Her works focus on the social uses of ICT and digital
skills, digital production, and consumption, as well as communication and digital culture. She is a professor of the
master’s degree in Electronic Government, Learning Management in Virtual Environments of the System of the
Virtual University at the University of Guadalajara and on Higher Secondary Education of the National Pedagogical
University (UPN) Unit 061 Colima, Mexico.
University of Guadalajara, Mexico
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0003-1618-7634
Alejandra Ochoa Amezquita.
Recently graduated with a degree in Governance and New Citizenship from the University
of
La Ciénega
in the State of Michoacán. She has organized and coordinated dierent congresses such as e Solidarity
Economy Week and the fourth academic meeting on local and regional development. Her most recent approach to
research has been through her participation in the Pacic Scientic and Technological Research Summer (Dolphin).
She is currently doing her thesis on “Virtual public space: a place for participation” to obtain her doctorate.
University of La Cienega, Mexico
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-7581-2105
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Anger, social polarization, and middle class in
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ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
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1. Introduction
As the world enters the third decade of the new century, it is possible to observe some global trends that have a direct impact
in the political and social landscape such as the arrival and consolidation of digital media (from smartphones to social media)
as the most important source of information, communication, and entertainment across the globe. By now about 59.5%, (4.66
billion) of the world’s population is connected to the Internet (Johnson, 2021), the most popular online activity is to comment
and share information on social media platforms: YouTube was the second most visited site on the Internet during 2020
(Alexa, 2021) and Facebook is one of the most active social platforms with nearly 2.89 billion monthly users (Statista, 2021).
is global hyperconnectivity provides diverse opportunities for citizens and governments: giving voice to local movements,
improving transparency and accountability, expanding socialization far beyond the traditional geographic barriers, among
others. During the pandemic context, digital technologies have played a key role, by supporting the virtualization of business
and services, letting people to continue working and studying at home (ITU, 2021). Social media and mobile applications
have allowed to stay in contact with relatives and friends despite the social connements, and receive valuable information
Abstract:
Hate has become an important element used in populist politicians’
discourse to support their agenda. is is the case of the Mexican
president, Lopez Obrador (AMLO). He has used ocial channels and
social media to verbally harass his critics and the opposition. One
distinctive element in AMLO’s media strategy is “La Mañanera,” a daily
morning conference where he informs about his national agenda.
However, this space has served to exculpate his relatives and party
members from the misuse of public money and to openly criticize
journalists, social organizations, opponents and, since June 2021,
the Mexican middle class. is article uses the discourse-historical
approach (DHA) framework to study the discursive construction
of “middle class” under the scope of López Obrador’s speech in
Las Mañaneras. To analyze how AMLO uses social resentment
to attack the members of this social sector, and what are the main
rhetorical elements employed towards the middle class under López
Obrador discourse. As outcomes will show, what is remarkable about
AMLO’s speeches towards the middle class is the ability of populist
governments to use traditional stereotypes, collective resentment,
and a partial interpretation of national history to harass dissents and
preserve public approval.
Keywords:
Populism; hate discourse; López Obrador; middle class; Mexico;
mass media.
Resumen:
El odio se ha convertido en un elemento clave en el discurso de los polí
-
ticos populistas para apoyar sus acciones. Tal es el caso del presidente
mexicano, López Obrador (AMLO), quien ha utilizado medios ocia
-
les y redes sociales para acosar a sus críticos y a la oposición política.
Un elemento distintivo en su estrategia mediática es “La Mañanera”,
una conferencia matutina en la que se informa sobre la agenda presi
-
dencial, sin embargo, este espacio ha servido también para exculpar
a sus familiares y militantes, así como para criticar a periodistas, or
-
ganizaciones sociales, opositores y, desde el segundo semestre de 2021,
a la clase media mexicana. El propósito de este artículo es emplear
el corpus teórico del enfoque histórico del discurso (DHA) para estu
-
diar la construcción discursiva de la “clase media” en Las Mañane
-
ras de López Obrador, cómo AMLO usa el resentimiento social para
atacar a sus críticos, y cuáles son los principales elementos retóricos
empleados contra la clase media. Los resultados nales mostrarán la
capacidad de los gobiernos populistas de utilizar los estereotipos tra
-
dicionales, el resentimiento colectivo y una interpretación parcial de
la historia nacional para acosar a los disidentes y lograr altos niveles
de popularidad.
Palabras clave:
Populismo; discursos de odio; López Obrador; clase media; México;
medio masivos.
Received: 07/10/2021 - Accepted: 13/02/2022 - Early access: 04/03/2022 - Published: 01/07/2022
Recibido: 07/10/2021 - Aceptado: 13/02/2022 - En edición: 04/03/2022 - Publicado: 01/07/2022
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related with sanitation measures, quarantine regulations and vaccination campaigns. e pandemic context has conrmed
how Internet access cannot still be considered as an accessory technology but as an essential human right (Web Foundation,
2020).
However, this digital omnipresence has carried unwilling eects at a social and personal level: Internet addiction which
causes depression and anxiety among other health issues; digital divide which exacerbates the traditional social exclusion
problems, the proliferation of online scams and harassment, etc. But there are other negative outcomes, which now stand a
great threat to democratic institutions such as free press, free elections, civil rights, and power division. One of them is the
irruption of the Fake News phenomena and the organization of disinformation campaigns to cause social polarization and
distrust towards traditional media (Mourão & Robertson, 2019). Since citizens depend more on social platforms such as
Facebook or Twitter than analogic channels as the case of television or print press to become informed about public issues,
populist politicians and movements (from Far and Right ideology) have approached these platforms to share untruthful
or partial information, seed conspiracy theories, instigate incertitude and doubts among the public and attack electoral
adversaries and dissident groups (Miró-Llinares & Aguerri, 2021).
Although there is not a consensus about a unique denition of populism, the word is usually linked with a political interaction
in where the term “the people” plays a key role in the conformation of the discourse and agenda (Mott, 2016; Ron & Nadesan,
2020). Populist ideology has its foundations in two key aspects: a basic conict in between two antagonist groups, one
morally righteous and another licentious, whose actions aect the people’s interests. e virtuous and the decadent group
tend to vary depending on the basic ideology of the populist group or politician (extreme left or right): from the capitalism
and free market to the labor unions and civil organizations. e other important element is the existence of a charismatic
leader or a faction who stands as the only transcriber or interpreter of “the people’s will” (Mudd, 2017). Subsequently, they
use the people’s will argument to gain power, reduce civil rights, and exercise public force to attack dissidents and critics of
the regime. Populist movements ourished in recent years. ey have nurtured from an adverse global context shaped by
economic crises, terrorist attacks and civil wars, massive migration inuxes, the eects of the pandemic in the social sphere,
a rising xenophobia and racism, and a growing disillusionment towards customary politics and institutions. Extremist
organizations have taken advantage of this discontent to gain public support and resources (Steenvoorden & Harteveld,
2018; Engesser et al., 2017). e use of social media, virtual partisans, and bots to organize deception campaigns and cause
social polarization has granted them the achievement of important electoral victories (Lazaridis et al., 2016). Many of those
leaders, as the case of Donald Trump in the United States or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, have even won presidential elections
using an open populist discourse based on misinformation and hate, blaming political adversaries, journalists, international
institutions, migrants, and members of genre minorities as the main source of the economic problems and public instability
(Waisbord, 2020; Miller-Idriss, 2020).
e rise of populism and the use of media, particularly social media, to spread verbal oenses, and negative imaginaries
to produce social resentment as an electoral strategy have become an important subject in the recent academic literature
(Assimakopoulos et al., 2017; KhosraviNik & Esposito, 2018; Paz et al., 2020; Carlson, 2021). As scholars have elucidated,
the hate discourse towards ethnic, religious and genre minorities, and even social classes, considered as privileged, has
become one of the most important discursive tactics used in populist speeches to support their actions and agenda (Lim,
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2017; Chiluwa et al., 2020). e use of hate speech has been analyzed under the critical discourse analysis framework (CDA)
as an instrument to create sectarism and polarization during political campaigns (Lim, 2017) or as a benet to politicians
to increase their popularity (Sengul, 2019). Some studies emphasize how media frames public problems, as the case
of migration crises in Europe, to vindicate attacks towards refugees in Poland (Krotol & Motak, 2018), and in what way
social media is used to widely disperse hate discourse towards minorities, as the case of the Roma ethnic group in Sweden
(Enarsson & Lindgren, 2019). Other authors have paid attention to how hate discourse materializes into class resentment,
triggered by the long-lasting eects of the 2008 economic crisis and the recent impact of the pandemic in the labor market,
the closing of businesses and the decline of the living standards (Burch, 2018; Foa & Wilmot, 2019; Tooze, 2020). Extremist
politicians have addressed the anger and frustration caused by the establishment of austerity policies, social distancing
policies and low rates of economic growth (Cohen, 2019). In times of economic depression, the target of this hate stands
on social classes which are considered as parasites or privileged under an “injustice system,” such as those beneting from
social aids like people with disabilities (Mylonas, 2018) or refugees (Hakoköngäs et al., 2020). Along with the disinformation
phenomena, the rise of populism and the spread of hate discourse, the irruption of the pandemic has caused, not only health
and economic problems, but it has become the perfect “excuse” for populist presidents to seize more power, intimidate the
political opposition and attack critics using the pandemic context as an argument to reduce civil rights and public aid to
minority groups such as migrants, ethnic groups, and members of the gay collectives.
Latin America has not been invulnerable to these adverse context and social trends. In recent years, some politicians embraced
a confronting discourse during the electoral campaigns, which not only helped them to win the presidential elections, but to
gain exceptional public support and seize more power. ese are the cases of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, Nayib Bukele
in 2019 in El Salvador, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in 2018. López Obrador or AMLO, as he is widely known
in Mexico, has made a profuse use of social media to communicate his political ideas (Lopez-Chau et al., 2019). He has been,
as many other populist politicians, very successful to translate public resentment about the economic and social situation in
Mexico into electoral votes. Under the trending slogan “La Cuarta Transformación” (e Fourth Transformation), he became,
before the eyes of his followers, a charismatic leader that will resolve Mexico’s traditional problems: insecurity, criminality,
and poverty. In e Fourth Transformation the employment of moral imaginaries is recurrent, in which AMLO and his
functionaries appear as uncorrupted, invested with high patriotic values (Ulfgard & Villanueva, 2020). is is a discourse
that contrasts with the corruption cases involving the regime’s functionaries and AMLO’s relatives uncovered by the Mexican
press since his arrival to the presidency (Oré, 2020). While López Obrador openly protects the members of his family and
political supporters, he has used the governmental apparatus to pursue and harass independent democratic institutions
as the case of the INE (Instituto Nacional Electoral-e National Electoral Institute), the political opposition, and the free
press (Agren, 2021). He has used ocial channels and social media to attack his critics, labeling them as “Fifís,” a pejorative
term from French origin that was employed during e Porriato in Mexico (1876-1911) to designate the members of upper
classes in the country, but that now, under AMLO’s presidency, is used to cause public scorn to everybody who does not
comply with his ideas and actions. One distinctive element of AMLO media strategy is the making of “La Mañanera,” which
is a dairy morning conference in where he informs about the national agenda. However, this space has served to exculpate
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his relatives and the members of the ocial party from the misuse of public resources and openly criticize journalists, social
organizations, and opponents (López Obrador, 2019; La Otra Opinión, 2020).
But in June 2021, after a mid-term election in Mexico, in where the presidents’ party “MORENA,” Movimiento Regeneración
Nacional (National Regeneration Movement) suered a huge electoral setback in Mexico City (Cota, 2021), the largest
metropole in the country, a crucial MORENA’s electoral stronghold and a good barometer to measure the people’s
preference for the next presidential elections; AMLO’s discourse in “La Mañanera” took a dierent tone. e president
started condemning the Mexican middle class throughout several morning conferences, accusing the members of being
“aspirationist and selsh,” and that they had been manipulated to vote against his political project (Guerrero & Baranda,
2021). e purpose of this article is to use the CDA framework, more in specic the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA),
to analyze the discursive construction of middle class under the scope of López Obrador’s speech in Las Mañaneras. How
AMLO uses social resentment to attack the members of this social sector, and what are the main rhetoric elements employed
towards the middle class under López Obrador discourse. As nal outcomes will show, AMLO’s case is a discerning example
of how populist governments use traditional stereotypes, social resentment, and a partial interpretation of national history to
harass dissents, avoid accountability and preserve public approval.
2. Method
e article’s methodology is based on the Critical Discourse Analysis framework (CDA). While there is not a unied
denition, it is possible to assert that CDA focusses on the analysis of documents (writings, photographs, audios, and videos,
etc.) as objects of powers. CDA considers documents as products of social interaction, consequently they reproduce social
contradictions, ideologies, and structures of domination. e aim of this methodology is to connect the discourse presented
in the documents with their structures of power and ideologies (Wodak & Meyer, 2009; Fairclough, 2010; van Dijk, 2015). is
research centers on the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), which has been widely used to study the use of hate rhetoric
in extremist populist discourses (Wodak, 2015; Sengul, 2019; Chiluwa et al., 2020). is analysis follows the approach outlined
by Reisigl & Wodak (2000:44-45), which proposes an inquiry centered on ve discursive strategies: (a) nomination strategies
by which one constructs and represents social actors. It refers to labeling tactics such as verbal metaphors to designate social
actors or groups; (b) predicational strategies are those stereotypical and evaluative attributions of negative and positive traits
in the linguistic form of implicit or explicit predicates. After the nomination of the groups, these strategies have the function of
reinforcing the separation of the confronting groups according to the regimen ideology (Left or Right); (c) the argumentation
strategies through which positive and negative attributions are justied. How the populist group vindicated their harassment
to the minorities or political adversaries; (d) framing or discourse representation by means of which speakers express their
involvement in discourse and make explicit his point of view and (e) intensifying/mitigation strategies “help to qualify and
modify the epistemic status of a proposition by intensifying or mitigating the illocutionary force. It implies the use of vague
expressions, hyperboles, diminutives, or augmentatives, among other rhetoric gures” Reisigl & Wodak (2000:45).
Data gathering centered on the analysis of the middle-class term in AMLO´s speech in Las Mañaneras after the 2021 mid-
term election in Mexico. e retrieval of the president’s discourses was possible through the public videos that he shares
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on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/lopezobrador), registered under the name Andrés Manuel Lopez
Obrador, in which he has the list of conferencias de prensa matutinas (Morning media conferences). e eldwork took
three months (From July to September). During the information gathering, 50 press conferences were analyzed. ese
conferences corresponded to the weekly broadcasts (from Monday to Friday) from May 31 to August 6, 2021. e morning
media conferences had an average duration of 2 hours, the shortest time being 47 minutes and the longest being two hours
and a half.
As a result of the analysis of the 50 press conferences, it was found that in 11 of them AMLO used the term middle class,
mainly in the questions and answers section (73%). e term middle class was primarily used in June (10 conferences) and
once July (July 14). On average, the president used this term two times per conference, the highest number of mentions being
seven and the lowest one. To analyze the rhetoric construction of middle class under the scope of López Obrador speech in
Las Mañaneras, it was necessary to transcribe the 29 fragments of his speech in which he uses this term in the 11 conferences.
e analysis was based on studying these fragments from the president’s discourses in their original language (Spanish).
When necessary, the sections were translated into English.
3. Outcomes and Discussion
is segment focuses on the analysis of the discursive construction of middle class in 29 fragments of AMLO´s speech in
11 press conferences, Las Mañaneras, after the 2021 mid-term election in Mexico. ese conferences corresponded to the
broadcasts of June 7, (1 fragment) June 8, (1 fragment) June 10, (2 fragments) June 11, (2 fragments) June 14, (7 fragments)
June 21, (1 fragments) June 22, (1 fragments) June 24, (5 fragments), June 28, (2 fragments) June 30, (2 fragments) and July 14
(5 fragments). After selecting the fragments, they were classied into categories corresponding to the ve strategies proposed
by (Reisigl & Wodak, 2000: 44-45).
3.1. Nomination strategies: e construction of the middle class in AMLO’s Discourse
One of the most signicant characteristics of AMLO’s discourse during the presidential campaign and what goes of his
presidency, is the construction of well-dened antagonist groups. On one side, the “good people” (El Pueblo Bueno), consisted
of low-income voters such as peasants and factory workers, bureaucrats and members of the middle class, high-skill workers
such as teachers and medics and small business owners. On the other side are the “Fifís” or members of the upper classes
(millionaires, owners of big media corporations, members of the political opposition and those who sympathize with them).
In 2018, AMLO won the presidency with key support from the middle class (Torreblanca et al., 2018). But after the electoral
setback of June 06, 2021, when the middle class’ vote favored the opposition in Mexico City, the members of this sector
were no longer labeled as
good people
since “they have a conservative and aspirationist mentality… they become selsh
and classist” (Mañanera, 06/07/2021). In another conference, the president provided his vision of the social class structure
in Mexico (Mañanera, 06/10/2021): “Imagining that Mexican society is a pyramid, in the base are millions of poor people,
then, it is the middle class, and in the top are those who have more resources…. we (he continued with the explanation)
have to attend those who are below, the poorest.” In subsequent conferences, Obrador oered more details about who
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constitutes the middle class: “people who read El Reforma,” a conservative newspaper, very critical of AMLO’s programs and
actions (Mañanera, 06/10/2021), with higher education (Mañanera, 06/11/2021), “religious people but just in appearance”
(Mañanera, 06/11/2021).
3.2. Predicational strategies: stereotypical, evaluative attributions
Lopez Obrador formulated his attack towards the middle class in Las Mañaneras as a discursive comparison in between
two encountered models (Mañanera, 06/21/2021): a virtuous and a malicious version. e wicked one is composed by
those who were manipulated by the “Fifí” class to vote against the presidential political party. ose are “aspirationist”
and “individualists,” and “they have no scruples” (Mañanera, 14/06/2021). On the contrary, he proposed the creation of
a righteous “middle class” based on a humanitarian vision that praises to help and support other people in need. “We will
form a new middle class” with “humanistic principles,” “we do not want those who are classists,” “ladinos” (A very pejorative
word which means ‘trickster’ in Spanish), “know-it-all that portrayed their career diplomas as nobiliary titles” (Mañanera,
06/22/2021). He later armed that this new middle class should be more “human” and “fraternal” (Mañanera, 06/21/2021).
A few days later, when a journalist asked him in “La Mañanera” (06/24, 2021), about the impact of the middle class’s vote in
the negative outcome of his political party in the mid-term election, he emphasized that when “he mentions the middle class”,
he refers only to a sector of this group that “has gained inuence due to 36 years of neoliberal policies”, that is indoctrinated
with the idea of “ succeeding at all costs, without moral scruples of any kind”. For Lopez Obrador, the virtuous middle class
is compressive, but the other one is selsh and intolerant. When questioned about the impact of an urban train accident in
Mexico City (may/03) in the electoral outcome of June 2021; he complained that “humble and good people can understand
that these terrible accidents could happen, but the middle class does not” (Mañanera, 06/08/2021).
3.3. e argumentation strategies through which positive and negative attributions are justied
A distinctive of Obrador discourse towards middle class is the construction of a rhetoric based on historical stereotypes
and class conicts extracted from the Mexican history, to justify the verbal attacks to those who did not vote for him or the
detractors of his policies. When referring to how the “Fifís” (the upper class) manipulated the middle class in the elections,
he introduced historic passages related with e Porrian Era in Mexico (Porriato, 1876 - 1911), when Mexico had a great
economic expansion, but the economic and political power concentrated in an oligarchy headed by General Porrio Díaz
and in the subsequent Mexican Revolution (1910 a 1917). e aim is to use nationalist imaginaries well established across the
decades in the Mexican society by the postrevolutionary governments, in which the narrative is produced under a prejudiced
logic of
heroes
and
villains
. e justication towards these verbal assaults is based on the perversion and moral decline
of a group that was inuenced by the upper class. e middle class then becomes selsh and unscrupulous (Mañanera,
06/28/2021), he continuously introduces in these confrontations elements and images extracted from Mexican history,
particularly from e Porriato, to support his assumptions and justify his confrontations. When he wanted to illustrate how
newspapers, particularly “El Reforma,” manipulated the middle class, he presented the example of how Porrio Díaz used
El Imparcial (e Impartial), a pro-government newspaper, as an ideological instrument to support his regime. Later he
introduced other examples related with the use of media by authoritarian regimes, “this is the fascist politics,” he continued,
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“that Hitler established with Goebbels, according to which a lie that is repeated many times can become the truth” (Mañanera
06/14/2021). On June 24, he continued explaining how the middle class was negatively inuenced, he mentioned that “it was
the Fifís who celebrated when Gustavo Madero (A Mexican Revolutionary Hero and political adversary of Porrio Díaz) was
cowardly killed.”
3.4. Framing or discourse representation by means of which speakers express their involvement in discourse
Something remarkable about the actual populist governments is that they do not need to cover or hide the use of negative
stereotypes and insults in their discourses towards minorities or political opponents. On the contrary, they openly use verbal
aggressions, racist connotations and incorporate partial and false information to frame public opinion in controversial issues
such as the aid to refugees or the right to carry weapons, committing all these assaults and attacks without any palpable legal
or moral consequence. Lopez Obrador is not the exception to this rule. Across La Mañanera, he has interlaced, through a
biased historic and social vision, a moral justication to harass a sector of the population, that no longer approves his political
project and voted against it. In accordance with a political imaginary grounded on moral virtuosity and the protection of
the people, he constructed a condemnatory discourse in which he proclaims that “the middle class was manipulated,” and
“served to the economic power” (Mañanera, 06/11/2021). On July 14, 2021, he pronounced against those who organized a
public demonstration in front of the Cuban embassy in Mexico because of a recent protest in the island (July 11, 2021), he
called them “conservative members of the middle class.” ese series of attacks, however, do not mean that AMLO is now
against the middle class, but on the contrary. Along these weeks, he has developed a discourse based on the idea of
salvation
,
the redemption of a manipulated social sector. He stated that he will promote social mobility, but he wanted that more
Mexicans “come out from poverty and become middle class with social dimension and humanism, a new middle class, no
individualist, classist, racist” (Mañanera, 07/14/2021). Since the electoral vote and support of the middle class remains vital
for Lopez Obrador and his party’s aspirations for the next presidential election of 2024, he is trying to regain his electoral favor
through an elaborated discourse based on the
loss of virtue
and
the recovery of redemption
.
3.5. Intensifying/mitigation strategies
On June 07, Lopez Obrador started his campaign against the middle class. During the next weeks, he employed diverse
rhetoric gures such as hyperboles and vague connotations as intensifying strategies to increase the attacks towards his
critics, but also used these rhetorical elements as mitigating strategies as well to limit the critics and observations towards his
actions. He used, for example, a moralist vocabulary to negatively label and criticize this sector: “selsh,” “classist,” “ladino
and racist,” “aspirationist, and unscrupulous”. ese vague connotations served as an intensifying strategy to attack those
who do not support his political agenda. In addition, during these morning conferences, the presence of hyperboles was
common in his discourse to stress and overstate the dierences among his vision of middle-class and the other, conformed for
those voting against his political party. A “humanist and fraternal” middle class in contraposition to another that “only cares
about themselves” (06/28/2021). e use of vague expressions appears as well when the president mentioned the existence
of a “corrupt government” that is defended by conservative intellectuals and some members of the middle-class (June 14,
2021). On other occasions, he employs ambiguous expressions as a mitigation strategy to weaken the criticism about the
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negative impact of a suburban train accident in Mexico City in the local elections. He evaded talking about the responsibility
of the authorities in the incident, instead alluded to the existence of a “dirty war” where “the conservative party” (another
nebulous term) used this tragedy during the elections to gain support. He also used pejorative sentences to label his critics
as a mitigation strategy, “they lack ethics and morality,” and “privileged” (June 22, 2021).
Obrador took advantage of his morning conferences to structure a speech around two antagonist models of people: one
employed to negatively label his political adversaries, the free press and those who voted against his political party. e other,
a
honorable model
that serves as a propagandist tool in where the charismatic leader connects himself with an idealistic
notion of a
virtuous middle class
. e two antagonist models served him as a justication to openly attack the free press
and the dissidents as members of a corrupted class that are selsh and racist, but at the same time, it gives him an excuse to
undertake a wider propagandistic crusade to intent to recover the condence of this sector.
4. Conclusion
Since his arrival to the presidency, Lopez Obrador introduced Las Mañaneras, a new form of political communication which
consisted in a daily morning conference usually broadcasted at 7 am. Obrador proposed this mechanism to share information
with the Mexican citizens to combat, in his own words, “disinformation and the manipulation” (Forbes, 2020). However, as
it was possible to observed in this article, he has been able to build an ecient channel to monopolize the public agenda in
Mexico. at the show airs in the morning is not an eventuality but helps the president to set what will the most important
daily topics to discuss among the public, in traditional media but mainly on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, and
Twitter. AMLO has been successful in using public resources to convert
La Mañanera
not in an ocial presidential media
but as a mediatic show with prearrange questions, the use of fake news (Forbes Sta, 2021) and pro-government journalist
that serves to justify his actions, limiting the impact of the criticism from the free press and the political opposition. But at the
same time, Las Mañaneras have served to consolidate his political ideas, a leftist populism that mixes traditional vindications
towards the liberalism, the free market and the big corporations with Mexican imaginaries extracted from the national history
and class conict: the
Fifís
and
El pueblo Bueno
.
is study oered an insightful analysis of the Mexican president’s hate rhetoric towards the middle class. e Discourse-
Historical Approach (DHA) allowed to understand the discursive strategies used by López Obrador, not just to attack a
sector of Mexican society that does not necessarily comply with its agenda, but to create social polarization through the
construction of two encountered vision of the middle class: one virtuous and human that supported him and other vicious
and decadent that is against his political project. is strategy serves to justify public harassment and repression towards
political dissidents and critics. Far from being anecdotic, the constant allusion to
villains
and
heroes
of the Mexican patriotic
imaginary such as “Fifís”, “Porrio Díaz” and “Francisco I. Madero” in the construction of the two idealistic models, is a
moral justication to promote the gure of a “human” and “fraternal” middle class that stands with the president, and openly
denounces the other that is against him, and which is “selsh” and “aspirational.”
is work connects with the academic discussion on the use of hate discourse in populist discourse. As other investigations
have asserted, populist movements have incorporated hate as a key rhetorical instrument to promote polarization, triggering
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verbal and physical attacks towards political dissidents and minority groups and to gain public approval. e case of López
Obrador, besides the geographic and cultural barriers, matches with recent studies on the subject: Krotol & Motak (2018),
for example, providing strong evidence of how extremist political parties, as the case of PEGIDA in Germany, incorporate
nationalist images and symbols from the European history to justify their hate campaign towards Muslim migrants, as it has
happened in Las Mañaneras, with the frequent quoting of well-known historic personages and events that serve to justify
verbal attacks. Regarding class resentment, Mylonas (2018) emphasizes the key role of media framing in the spread of social
discontent due to economic adverse contexts. Populist presidents have become successful in routing this pessimism towards
minorities and international institutes such as refugees, the middle class, or the World Bank and e European Union. López
Obrador has taken advantage of Las Mañaneras to build a framed discourse through which he disperses a negative vision
about his political adversaries and promotes, at the same time, the presidential gure. He, as other populist movements and
leaders in Europe (Hakoköngäs et al., 2020), e United States (Kellner, 2016), and Latin America (Grigera, 2017), have been
very ecient using verbal aggressions to construct a partial and reduced vision of society in which two encountered factions
converge, one righteous on the side of
the people
and the president and another
malicious
that must be denounced.
While this article centered on the study of fragments from morning conferences to stand its assumptions about the use of hate
in AMLO’s discourses towards the middle class, it will be important that further studies on the subject expand the analysis
to social media platforms, to study people’s reaction towards the presidential attacks to the middle class, because this could
provide a wide idea of reception and the impact of AMLO’s discourse. Another limitation of the study is, paradoxically one of
its merits, the recency of the case (June-August 2021). More time is needed to understand how AMLO’s confronting strategy
will impact public opinion and, ultimately the electoral outcomes in the next Mexican elections. However, even with its
limitations this research provides an insightful study about how populist presidents make use of hatred as a discursive
approach to support their political agenda, and how, besides the cultural distance, populist movements (far right or far left)
across the globe develop similar rhetorical strategies to create and distribute a biased version of conicted society that serves
their interests.
5. Acknowledgements
Natalia Nicole Brzezinski
translated this article.
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6. Specic contributions from each author
Name and Surname
Concept and design of the work
David Ramírez Plascencia, Rosa María Alonzo González and Alejandra
Ochoa Amezquita
Methodology
Rosa María Alonzo González
Data collection and analysisAlejandra Ochoa Amezquita and David Ramírez Plascencia
Discussion and conclusionsDavid Ramírez Plascencia and Rosa María Alonzo González
Writing, formatting, revision and approval of versionsDavid Ramírez Plascencia
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