Self-Criticism in Post-Communist Times

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-53
Author(s):  
Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak
Keyword(s):  
Special Role ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Western Model ◽  
The People ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
Democratic Transformation ◽  
Intellectual Elites

This article revisits the category of self-criticism, which, as a speech act, plays a special role in the discourse of the intelligentsia, emerging from the peripheral status of Poland and from the imperative to catch up with the West. In contemporary Poland, self-criticism has revived as a discursive strategy in the context of coming to terms with the democratic transformation. For the right-wing intelligentsia, self-criticism is mainly a postulate that is addressed to political adversaries. For the left-liberal intelligentsia, self-criticism is not only a political weapon but also a strategy of introspective enunciation directed at the post-transformation society. A qualitative discourse analysis of selected acts of self-criticism performed by Polish left-liberal elites between 2013 and 2019 highlights two interconnected conflict-generating fields of debate: (1) reckoning with the neoliberal and pro-Western model of the 1989 democratic transition and (2) retribution on the post-transition intellectual elites that patronized the people and the attribution of responsibility for the Elite-People Division. The distinguished functions of self-criticism point to the political and class conflict as well as to the growing delegitimacy of the dominance of the neoliberal narrative about the Polish model of modernization.

Main Forms of Propagandistic Activities of the Right-Wing Parties (1904–1914)

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 656-676
Author(s):  
Igor V. Omeliyanchuk
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article examines the main forms and methods of agitation and propagandistic activities of monarchic parties in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Among them the author singles out such ones as periodical press, publication of books, brochures and flyers, organization of manifestations, religious processions, public prayers and funeral services, sending deputations to the monarch, organization of public lectures and readings for the people, as well as various philanthropic events. Using various forms of propagandistic activities the monarchists aspired to embrace all social groups and classes of the population in order to organize all-class and all-estate political movement in support of the autocracy. While they gained certain success in promoting their ideology, the Rights, nevertheless, lost to their adversaries from the radical opposition camp, as the monarchists constrained by their conservative ideology, could not promise immediate social and political changes to the population, and that fact was excessively used by their opponents. Moreover, the ideological paradigm of the Right camp expressed in the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” formula no longer agreed with the social and economic realities of Russia due to modernization processes that were underway in the country from the middle of the 19th century.

scholarly journals The Cultural Populism of Iosif I. Kablits (Yuzov) and its Foundations

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-653
Author(s):  
Gennadiy N. Mokshin
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The People ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Masses

This article reconstructs the cultural doctrine of the famous publicist of populism (narodnichestvo), I.I. Kablits (Yuzov). To just equate Kablits views with the slogan of yuzovshchina would be a narrow interpretation of his kul'turnichestvo; the slogan is characteristic for extreme right-wing populism during the upsurge of the revolutionary populist movement (narodovol'cheskoe dvizhenie). In 1880, Kablits was the first of the legal populists to pose the question, What is populism? According to the publicist, true narodnichestvo should be based on the principle that the forms of public life of the people must be in conformity with the development level of their consciousness. The author explains Kablits evolution from Bakunism to a peasant-centered narodnichestvo by his interpretation of the reasons for the split between the intelligentsia and the people. Kablits considered them antagonists, and defined the ultimate goal of the narodniki as the liberation of the people from the power of the intellectualbureaucratic minority, the latter supposedly trying to subjugate the life of the masses to its will. The article analyzes the main provisions of Kablits sociocultural concept of social transformations: apolitism, populism, and the initiative of the masses. The article identifies the differences between his program of developing the cultural identity of the people, on the one hand, and other populists' understanding of the tasks of cultural work, on the other. Particular attention is paid to Kablits-Yuzov's attitude towards the problem of educating the masses. Kablits was one of the few Russian populists who opposed the idea that the foundations of the worldview of the people must be changed, arguing that this would eliminate the traditional moral values of the village, including the sense of collectivism. The author assesses how Kablits, the leading publicist of the newspaper Nedelya, contributed to the establishment of a cultural direction in narodnichestvo at the turn of the 1870s and 1880s. According to the author, Kablits played a leading role in shaping the ideology of the right flank of the cultural direction in narodnichestvo. However, the pure populism of Kablits turned out to be too pseudo-scientific, dogmatic and irrational to attract the democratic intelligentsia for a long time; the latter had already become disillusioned with the idea of the people as the creator of new forms of social life.

scholarly journals ”Danmark er danskernes land”: Højrepopulistisk diskurs i Danmark

Politik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silas L. Marker
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The People ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Power Position

This paper examines the phenomenon of right-wing populism in Denmark in the year of 2019 by applying qualitative discourse analysis to a sample of central public texts from the right-wing populist parties New Right and The Danish People’s Party. Both parties utilize populist discourse by constructing a popular bloc (“the people”) stabilized by its constitutive outside: The elite and the Muslim immigrants. However, the discourses of the two parties differ from each other insofar as New Right articulates the strongest antagonism between the people and the elite, while The Danish People’s Party downplays this antagonism, most likely because the party has a central power position in Danish politics. 

The "Kunstgewerbe", the "Werkbund", and the Aesthetics of Culture in the Wilhelmine Period

1994 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Jarzombek
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
World War ◽  
German Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Great Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Aesthetics ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time

Joseph Goebbels' famous claim about the connection between politics and art in his letter to Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1933 epitomizes Nazi theories concerning the cultural benefits of art. In it he attempts both to legitimize and cunningly obscure an underlying reactionary agenda: We who are giving form to modern German politics, see ourselves as artists to whom has been assigned the great responsibility of forming, from out of the brute mass, the solid and full image of the people. Though there are many studies of post-World War I cultural aesthetics, especially in the context of Hitler's final solution, little has been done to trace that concept back to its nonreactionary, Wilhelmine roots. This paper, which looks at the discourse on cultural aesthetics as it emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century, also challenges some received notions about the Werkbund, an organization of artists, architects, and industrialists founded in 1907. With the Werkbund, the utopian potential of cultural aesthetics that emerged in the context of liberal bourgeois theory long before it was co-opted by the right wing revealed itself for the first time as a powerful instrument of cultural definition. This paper will also discuss some of the early formulators of Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics in various disciplines, Karl Scheffler (art critic), Heinrich Waentig (economist), Hermann Muthesius (architect), and Georg Fuchs (playwright), among others.

scholarly journals Technocratic Populism à la Française? The Roots and Mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron’s Success

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Perottino ◽  
Petra Guasti
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Fifth Republic ◽  
The People ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Recruitment Patterns ◽  
The Right ◽  
Elite Recruitment

This article focuses on the roots and mechanisms of Macron’s success, arguing that in 2017 two conditions were essential in Macron’s rise—the implosion of the established system of the French Fifth Republic in which the two main parties were alternating in power; and the rise of anti-establishment populist challengers on the right and on the left (cf. Stockemer, 2017; Zulianello, 2020). It was anti-establishment appeal that put Macron on the map, but the appeal to technocratic competence that won him the presidency. Technocratic populism transcends the left–right cleavage and, as a result, has a broader appeal than its left- and right-wing counterparts. Emmanuel Macron was an insider taking on the (crumbling) system and positioning himself as an outsider—refusing the traditional labels, including centrism, elite recruitment patterns, and mediated politics. Instead, Macron and <em>La Republique en Marche</em> attempted to create new forms of responsiveness by ‘giving voice to the people,’ while relying on technocratic competence as a legitimation mechanism. In power Emmanuel Macron attempts to balance responsiveness and responsibility (cf. Guasti &amp; Buštíková, 2020).

scholarly journals Counter-populist performances of (in)security: Feminist resistance in the face of right-wing populism in Poland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Bohdana Kurylo
Keyword(s):  
Gender Ideology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The People ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The Face ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract IR scholarship has recently seen a burgeoning interest in the right-wing populist politics of security, showing that it tends to align with the international ultraconservative mobilisation against ‘gender ideology’. In contrast, this article investigates how local feminist actors can resist right-wing populist constructions of (in)security by introducing counter-populist discourses and aesthetics of security. I analyse the case of Poland, which presents two competing populist performances of (in)security: the Independence March organised by right-wing groups on Poland's Independence Day and the Women's Strike protests against the near-total ban on abortion. The article draws on Judith Butler's theory of the performative politics of public assembly, which elucidates how the political subject of ‘the people’ can emerge as bodies come together to make security demands through both verbal and non-verbal acts. I argue that the feminist movement used the vehicle of populist performance to subvert the exclusionary constructions of (in)security by right-wing populists. In the process, it introduced a different conception of security in the struggle for a ‘livable life’. The study expands the understanding of the relationship between populism, security and feminism in IR by exploring how the populist politics of security is differently enacted by everyday agents in local contexts.

scholarly journals Whose “No Borders”? Achieving Border Liberalization for the Right Reasons

Refuge ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Gill
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Migratory Movements

Free population movement promises greater human liberties and improved economic performance. Inevitably, however, there are critics. Most vocally, the conservative Right points towards the erosion of Western welfare systems, the large migratory movements that a No Borders policy may precipitate, and the lowering of living standards in rich countries to approximate those in poor countries. This paper argues that, although the claims of the Right are often exaggerated, these objections have served to paste over important differences between advocates of No Borders, producing some unlikely bedfellows in opposition to conservative arguments. In particular, an uncomfortable conflation between liberal and Left-wing ideology has emerged as a result of the specific discursive strategy of Right-wing commentators to obfuscate distinctions between these ideological stances. After outlining the arguments of the Right for context, this paper responds to this conflation by distancing a Left-wing No Borders position from a free-market liberal No Borders position. It does this by using Left-wing arguments to criticize liberal No Borders ideology, and concludes by suggesting some key features of a Left-wing No Borders position.

The new moving right show

Soundings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (75) ◽  
pp. 111-123
Author(s):  
Andy Knott
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Range Analysis ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Fallow Period ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
The People ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

The current political conjuncture in the UK invites a revisiting of Stuart Hall's influential analysis of Thatcherism and, in particular, his characterisation of authoritarian populism. With the Conservatives' recent and ongoing shift towards right-wing populism under Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, we have a useful comparator with the turn to Thatcherism; and this shift also provides the opportunity to engage in a longer-range analysis of the relationship between conservatism, authoritarian/right-wing populism and neoliberalism. Hall's association of Thatcherism with authoritarian populism occurred during a fallow period in analyses of populism - in stark contrast to the contemporary populist 'moment', 'eruption' or 'explosion'. Thatcher's populist credentials are interrogated: some elements of current definitions of populism, including the people versus elite antagonism, were sidelined in her political language; and an emphasis on individualism infused her wider discourse. Nevertheless, the concept of authoritarian populism, and Hall's wider analysis, still offers an interesting perspective for a contemporary period of challenge to dominant discourse - even though the contestation is within the right.

Operation Monkey Wrench: Toward a Populist Policy Process?

Populism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Paul Adler ◽  
Todd Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Policy Process ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurs ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
Multilateral Agreement On Investment ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
The Right

Abstract The policy process literature focuses on technocratic insiders, while scholarship on populism hones in on demagogic outsiders. The latter’s distrust of elites, compromise, and nuance makes them potentially effective in opposition or government, but less obviously as intervenors in policy formation between elections. We argue that, under certain conditions, populists can effectively insert themselves into policy processes without seizing power or even reducing the basic polarity they believe exists between “the elite” and “the people.” In particular, populists can “monkey wrench” the policy process by getting maligned elites to act against their own interests, even if the populists themselves can agree on no alternative policies. Using original archival materials, we illustrate how the transnational movement against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the late 1990s deployed monkey-wrenching. In so doing, we contribute to an understanding of how Benjamin Moffitt’s conception of the populist style can be deployed to analyze left-wing transnational nongovernmental policy entrepreneurs, instead of the right-wing national government aspirants who are often focused upon in political science research on populism. We conclude that interdisciplinary scholarship between political scientists and historians can identify circumstances when populists’ influence on policy is more likely.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document