Extreme Right-wing Populism in Europe: Revisiting a Reified Association (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Rise of Nationalist Populism. Comparing Western European Right-Wing Populist Political Parties
Routledge, 2024
Due to its rise in Europe, the United States, and further afield, there is a growing interest in right-wing populism, an exclusionary and illiberal form of populism that has been able to attain success in several countries. This book contributes to the analysis of how populism, understood as a way of constructing the political, is shaped by the ideologies that permeate it. It examines how a certain form of nationalism is shaped by populist dynamics, that is by a certain form of identity-building. The book analyses the intersection between nationalism and populism in right-wing populist parties by using a discourse analysis methodology based on Ernesto Laclau’s works, thus conducting an examination similar to the ones presented by the Essex School of Discourse Analysis. The empirical analysis focuses on party literature and carefully selected candidate speeches at a national level for its three case studies, as well as providing an overarching comparison. The book shows how the economic crisis and the irruption of issues related to sovereignty and national identity arising in France, Italy and Spain paved the way for the emergence of their respective right-wing populist forces.
Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Populism in Europe
Milena Dragicevic and Jonathan Vickery (eds.). Cultural Policy Yearbook 2017-2018: Cultural Policy and Populism. Istanbul: İletisim Yayinları. C, 2018
This paper aims to portray theoretical debates to better understand the current state of the populist movements and political parties in the European Union, which is hit by various kinds of social-economic and financial difficulties leading to the escalation of fear and prejudice vis-à-vis ‘others’ who are ethno-culturally and religiously different. The main premise of this paper is that the ongoing social-political-economic-financial change in the EU resulting in fear against the unknown such as Islam, Muslims, refugees and migrants is likely to be turned by individual agents into cultural/religious/civilizational reification and political radicalization in order to overcome fear. The findings of this paper derive from a qualitative fieldwork held within the framework of a Horizon 2020 Research Project called “Critical Heritages (CoHERE): performing and representing identities in Europe”. The fieldwork was held the research team in Dresden, Toulon, Rome, Rotterdam, Athens and Istanbul between March and May 2017. The main premise of this work in progress is to claim that pathologizing right-wing populism is not scientifically and politically productive. Rather than being the cause of the current state of political crisis in many European Union countries, right-wing populism should be interpreted as one of the symptoms of the long-neglected structural problems augmented by neo-liberal forms of governmentality. In this regard, one of the most important claims of this paper among some others is that right-wing populism of the contemporary world is very different from its predecessor, far-right, or extreme right political parties. Today’s right-wing populist parties have rather become mainstream political parties appealing to not only working-class, or unemployed social groups but also to women, LGBTI, middle-class and upper-middle-class secular groups who feel threatened by radical Salafi Islam. The paper will start with the elaboration of the contemporary acts of populism from a theoretical perspective to lay the ground for finding a set of theoretical tools to compare the six counties with regard to the growing incidence of populism. The paper will continue to elaborate on the ways in which the right-wing populist parties mainstream their movements by underlining welfare policies, Islamophobia, environmental issues, unresolved historical cleavages, critic of multiculturalism, diversity, unity and Europeanization. The use of the fieldwork data will be limited with the findings from Dresden as the rise of the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) in the general elections in Germany (September 2017) triggered the public fear against the populist threat. Due to the lack of space and time, this work in progress will not be able to go deeper to define the notions of European heritage that circulate broadly in the public sphere among the populist political parties and movements, and to investigate how the ‘politics of fear’ relates to these notions of European heritage and identities.
Populist politics and the politics of "populism": The radical right in Western Europe
Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach, 2020
Populism in Western Europe has been especially associated with the radical right. Chapter 8 focuses on the role the concept of populism should play in our understanding of populist radical right (PRR) parties and on the role the signifier "populism" should play in assessing reactions to these parties by the press, other political actors, and academia. The authors challenge the prominent tendency to attach major importance to the PRR's populism or even to reduce our understanding of the PRR as essentially or predominantly populist. Somewhat paradoxically, they argue that in order to better understand the nature, role and impact of populism in Western Europe, the concept of populism needs to play a less central part in analyses of populist parties. They also stress the need to reflect more on the performative effects of European discourses about populism-understood as a signifier-on the diagnoses of and strategies against the PRR.
teaching and research staff, visiting professors, graduate students, visiting fellows, and invited participants in seminars, workshops, and conferences. As usual, authors bear full responsibility for the content of their contributions. Das Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS) wurde im Jahr 1963 von zwei prominenten Exilösterreicherndem Soziologen Paul F. Lazarsfeld und dem Ökonomen Oskar Morgenstern -mit Hilfe der Ford-Stiftung, des Österreichischen Bundesministeriums für Unterricht und der Stadt Wien gegründet und ist somit die erste nachuniversitäre Lehr-und Forschungsstätte für die Sozial-und Wirtschaftswissenschaften in Österreich. Die Reihe Politikwissenschaft bietet Einblick in die Forschungsarbeit der Abteilung für Politikwissenschaft und verfolgt das Ziel, abteilungsinterne Diskussionsbeiträge einer breiteren fachinternen Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Die inhaltliche Verantwortung für die veröffentlichten Beiträge liegt bei den Autoren und Autorinnen. Gastbeiträge werden als solche gekennzeichnet.
The rise of populist extremism in Europe: Lost in Diversity and Unity
CoHERE explores the ways in which identities in Europe are constructed through heritage representations and performances that connect to ideas of place, history, tradition and belonging. The research identifies existing heritage practices and discourses in Europe. It also identifies means to sustain and transmit European heritages that are likely to contribute to the evolution of inclusive, communitarian identities and counteract disaffection with, and division within, the EU. A number of modes of representation and performance are explored in the project, from cultural policy, museum display, heritage interpretation, school curricula and political discourse to music and dance performances, food and cuisine, rituals and protest. WP2 investigates public/popular discourses and dominant understandings of a homogeneous 'European heritage' and the ways in which they are mobilized by specific political actors to advance their agendas and to exclude groups such as minorities from a stronger inclusion into European society. What notions of European heritage circulate broadly in the public sphere and in political discourse? How do the 'politics of fear' relate to such notions of European heritage and identity across and beyond Europe and the EU? How is the notion of a European heritage and memory used not only to include and connect Europeans but also to exclude some of them? We are interested in looking into the relationship between a European memory and heritage-making and circulating notions of 'race', ethnicity, religion and civilization as well as contemporary forms of discrimination grounded in the idea of incommensurable cultural and memory differences. This essay reveals the social, political and economic sources of the populist zeitgeist in the European Union. The essay starts with an analysis of the current state of populist extremism in Europe. Subsequently, it elaborates different aspects of the current political framework in which populist political rhetoric is becoming strongly rooted in a time characterized with globalism, multiculturalism bashing, financial crisis, refugee crisis, Islamophobism, terror, Euroscepticism, and nativism.