NETANYAHU’S 2025 UNGA SPEECH: A STUDY OF IDEOLOGICAL FRAMING THROUGH LINGUISTIC MANIPULATION USING FAIRCLOUGH’S MODEL

UNGA oratory serves as a central instrument for states to secure legitimacy and foster international approval amid evolving geopolitical alignments. This study investigates the linguistic mechanisms in Netanyahu’s 2025 UNGA speech, emphasizing how rhetorical tools maintain hegemony, reorganize regional power dynamics, and respond to international legal challenges. The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) using Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional model, with Taguette assisting the analysis, to ensure a structured and clear workflow for coding themes in the speech transcript. The findings show that, through mythopoesis and ontological polarization, the speaker portrayed opponents as “monsters” from a “dark age” and deprived them of human rights protections. Additionally, the study notes a shift toward validation in which the "Rising Lion" narrative reframes unilateral military force as a worldwide service. The findings show that absolute modality is widely used to achieve discursive closure, to invalidate as sheer madness, and to stifle international legal opposition. The study concludes that the 2025 address marks a new boundary of restoration, in which high-intensity material processes and religious motifs normalize a permanent exception. These findings suggest that keen, close, and critical discourse analysis leaves no room for diplomacy, which could provide a precautionary framework for the future of international political communication, and frames truth as objective on the UNGA platform while overlooking international standards.