scholarly journals The rise of the post-religious right: Christianism and Secularism in the French Rassemblement National

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110468
Author(s):  
Tobias Cremer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Social Cleavage ◽  
The Relationship

This article investigates Western European right-wing populists’ ambiguous relationship with religion and secularism using the example of the French Rassemblement National (RN). Drawing on social cleavage theory, survey data and elite interviews with RN leaders, French mainstream politicians and Church authorities, it finds that the RN employs Catholicism and laïcité as cultural identity markers against Islam to mobilise voters around a new identity cleavage between liberal-cosmopolitans and populist-communitarians. However, instead of a rapprochement with Christian policy positions, ethics and institutions, this article finds that the RN is becoming increasingly secularist in its policies, personnel and electorate. This finding is of significant relevance for the broader populism and religion literature not only because it suggests the centrality of right-wing identity politics for populist parties, but also because it challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between right-wing populism and religion by providing evidence that in Western Europe the former is increasingly dominated by its ‘post-religious’ wing.

Authoritarianism and the Evolution of West European Electoral Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Psychological Disposition ◽  
The Eu

The book provides a novel explanation of rising Euroscepticism and right-wing populism in Western Europe. The changing political and cultural environment of recent decades is generating an ongoing realignment of voters structured by authoritarianism, which is a psychological disposition towards the maintenance of social cohesion and order at the expense of individual autonomy and diversity. High authoritarians find the values and demographic changes of the past several decades a threat to social cohesion, which has created an opportunity for populist radical right (PRR) parties to gain their support by campaigning against these perceived threats to national community posed by immigration, values change, and European integration. The result is a worldview evolution in which party conflict is shaped by the rival preferences of high and low authoritarians. Drawing on national and cross-national survey data as well as an original survey experiment, this book demonstrates how the relationship between authoritarianism and (1) attitudes towards the EU and (2) voting behaviour has evolved since the 1990s. In doing so, this book advances these literatures by providing an explanation for why certain voters are shifting towards PRR parties as electoral politics realigns.

Die Macht der Bilder und Bilder der Macht: die sprachliche Konstruktion von Nationalismus und Konservatismus in der strategischen politischen Kommunikation von Vox España

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-566
Author(s):  
Sandra Issel-Dombert
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Media ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractFrom a theoretical and empirical linguistic point of view, this paper emphasizes the importance of the relationship between populism and the media. The aim of this article is to explore the language use of the Spanish right wing populism party Vox on the basis of its multimodal postings on the social network Instagram. For the analysis of their Instagram account, a suitable multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) provides a variety of methods and allows a theoretical integration into constructivism. A hashtag-analysis reveals that Vox’s ideology consists of a nativist and ethnocentric nationalism on the one hand and conservatism on the other. With a topos analysis, the linguistic realisations of these core elements are illustrated with two case studies.

The People: Ethnoracial Configurations, Old and New

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Leila Brännström
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure

In recent years the Sweden Democrats have championed a clarification of the identity of the ‘the people’ in the Instrument of government. The reference, they argue, should be to the ethnic group of Swedes. This chapter will take this ambition to fix the subject of popular sovereignty as the point of departure for discussing some of the ways in which the contemporary anti-foreigner political forces of Northern and Western Europe imagine ‘the people’ and identify their allies and enemies within and beyond state borders. To set the stage for this exploration the chapter will start by looking at Carl Schmitt’s ideas about political friendship, and more specifically the way he imagines the relationship between ‘us’ in a political and constitutional sense and ‘the people’ in national and ethnoracial terms. The choice to begin with Schmitt is not arbitrary. His thoughts about the nature of the political association have found their way into the discourse of many radical right-wing parties of Western and Northern Europe.

scholarly journals Populism and Support for Protectionism: The Relevance of Opposition to Trade Openness for Leftist and Rightist Populist Voting in The Netherlands

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen van der Waal ◽  
Willem de Koster
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Trade Openness ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Political Distrust ◽  
The Relationship

Leftist and rightist populist parties in Western Europe both oppose trade openness. Is support for economic protectionism also relevant for their electorates? We assess this in the Netherlands, where both types of populist parties have seats in parliament. Analyses of representative survey data ( n = 1,296) demonstrate that support for protectionism drives voting for such parties, as do the well-established determinants of political distrust (both populist constituencies), economic egalitarianism (leftist populist constituency) and ethnocentrism (rightist populist constituency). Surprisingly, support for protectionism does not mediate the relationship between economic egalitarianism and voting for left-wing populists, or the link between political distrust and voting for either left-wing or right-wing populist parties. In contrast, support for protectionism partly mediates the association between ethnocentrism and voting for right-wing populists. We discuss the largely independent role of protectionism in populist voting in relation to the cultural cleavage in politics and electoral competition, and also provide suggestions for future research.

scholarly journals Populism

Soundings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (72) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
David Featherstone ◽  
Lazaros Karaliotas
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Populism refers to forms of politics that put 'the people' at their centre, but the way 'the people' is understood varies widely. Questions of left populism have gained significant traction and engagement in the last decade - and this is a key focus of this article. While recognising the importance of Ernesto Laclau's analysis in On Populist Reason, the authors argue that his work is hindered by an overly formalist account of the political. Stuart Hall's writings on Thatcherism offer a more contextual and situated engagement with particular populist strategies, and have continuing relevance for understanding right-wing populism. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece offer actually existing experiences of left populism. We discuss three limitations in their strategies: their 'nationed' narratives of the crisis; the relationship between the parties' leadership and grassroots politics; and the nature of their engagement with internationalist political projects. Part of the critical terms series

Hip Hop as Public Pedagogy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra D'Urso
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Public Pedagogy ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter is a contribution to the literatures on hip hop and identity politics among two rappers of color in Scandinavia. Locating the artists’ pedagogical practices within global flows of resistance in hip hop culture, the concept of public pedagogy is employed for analyzing how these artists use hip hop as a medium for education and activism outside of formal educational institutions. The analysis focuses on counter-hegemonic representations of identity in the music of Adam Tensta and Eboi. The author argues that the two artists have situated themselves as public pedagogues and catalysts for social change and that they have confront right-wing populism and deconstruct Nordic notions of Otherness in their music In doing so, the artists provide nuanced counter-narratives that share insight into how global struggles for resources and neoliberal policies in the welfare state are brought to bear upon individuals living in the Nordic countries.

scholarly journals On the Distinct Effects of Left-Wing and Right-Wing Populism on Democratic Quality

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Huber ◽  
Christian H. Schimpf
Keyword(s):  
Minority Rights ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Democratic Quality ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Relationship

This study examines the differences and commonalities of how populist parties of the left and right relate to democracy. The focus is narrowed to the relationship between these parties and two aspects of democratic quality, minority rights and mutual constraints. Our argument is twofold: first, we contend that populist parties can exert distinct influences on minority rights, depending on whether they are left-wing or right-wing populist parties. Second, by contrast, we propose that the association between populist parties and mutual constraints is a consequence of the populist element and thus, we expect no differences between the left-wing and right-wing parties. We test our expectations against data from 30 European countries between 1990 and 2012. Our empirical findings support the argument for the proposed differences regarding minority rights and, to a lesser extent, the proposed similarities regarding mutual constraints. Therefore we conclude that, when examining the relationship between populism and democracy, populism should not be considered in isolation from its host ideology.

scholarly journals Rückkehr des Hauptwiderspruchs?

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 411-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Dowling ◽  
Silke Van Dyk ◽  
Stefanie Graefe
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

 How to explain the relative success of the AfD in Germany, the presidential election of Donald Trump in the USA, the Brexit vote or the popularity of the Right in France and elsewhere in Europe? Moreover, why did the Left not see this authoritarian turn coming? One prominent suggestion has been that the Left abandoned the white working class, thereby becoming the inadvertent midwife of a right-wing resurgence. Significant blame for this is in turn apportioned to the emergence of ‘identity politics’. In this essay, the authors take issue with this line of argumentation and criticise some of the implicit assumptions they consider problematic in current debates on the Left regarding the relationship between gender, race, class and emancipatory politics. They argue that struggles against both neoliberalism and the New Right require intersectional analyses of contemporary global class relations that do not abandon the important achievements and insights of new and newest social movements.

scholarly journals Digital populism and disinformation in «post-truth» times

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Hélder Prior
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Current Model ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Relationship

This article presents an attempt to understand the relationship between digital populism and post-truth politics. At first, we will try to understand the fuzzy semantic category of populism. Next, we examine the growth of right-wing populism in Europe and its main characteristics. Finally, we analyze how the current model of networked communication, particularly direct communication, and the anatomy of digital social networks, become a fertile field for the dissemination of populist rhetoric, articulating the concept with the modern mechanisms of disinformation and falsification of reality.

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