A President’s Portrait in Domestic Protest: The Anatomy of Hate

Abstract

The extreme level of tension during the Euromaidan in Ukraine has caused a real explosion of urban post-folklore creativity. These folklore forms have many distinctive features of traditional folklore, but they are also characterized by their means of transmission. For instance, anonymous inscriptions could appear anywhere. Such texts have their own dramaturgy, and they recreate the development of the Euromaidan events (from simple appeals to give people an opportunity to determine their own destiny to openly hostile discourse that portrayed the former President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, as the main enemy of the Euromaidan). Among those attested: distortions of Yanukovich’s name; demonstration of contempt for his image; insults; mention of his criminal past and ongoing corruption; and prophecies of his fate. One of the defining features of such texts is the violation of prohibitions on the use of dysphemisms and vulgarity as a verbal weapon against an enemy. We will also discuss the basic functions of protest folklore and hate speech.