Parallels, resemblances, and interconnections between contemporary right‐wing populism and the populism of agrarian movements are examined in this essay. The two are partly linked through their ...social base in the countryside. This paper explores an agenda for political conversation and research on possible contributions to the twin efforts of splitting the ranks of right‐wing populists while expanding the united front of democratic challengers. The challenge is how to transform the identified interconnections into a left‐wing political project that can erode right‐wing populism. This requires a reclaiming of populism. In exploring this agenda, the paper revisits the ideas and practices of right‐wing populism and agrarian populism and the awkward overlaps and fundamental differences between them. It concludes with a discussion on the challenge of forging a reformulated class‐conscious left‐wing populism as a countercurrent to right‐wing populism, and as a possible political force against capitalism and towards a socialist future.
Right‐wing populism has gained ground in Europe in recent years, with the greatest support among rural communities. Yet the European countryside remains largely overlooked in debates on the current ...political crisis and the ways out of it. This article aims to provide keys for understanding the connection between right‐wing populism and the rural world in Europe. Our analysis unfolds around three main ideas. First, we argue that the root cause of the spread of right‐wing populism is the fundamental, multidimensional crisis of globalised neoliberal capitalism, particularly pronounced in Europe’s countryside. Second, we examine what role historical legacies, trajectories of agrarian change, and other national, regional and local specificities play in shaping populist movements in different rural areas in Europe. Finally, we discuss the constraints and possibilities for the emergence of agrarian (populist) movements that may offer progressive alternatives to right‐wing populism in the countryside.
Democracies across the globe are shaken by a new class of populist right‐wing politicians. A defining element of right‐wing populism is a preference for antagonistic rhetoric to describe opponents. ...Three studies connect support for right‐wing populist rhetoric to collective nostalgia for the past. Importantly, the results show that collective nostalgia can both increase and decrease support for right‐wing populist antagonistic rhetoric, depending on how the past is conceptualized. Nostalgia for a past characterized by political incorrectness is associated with increased support, whereas nostalgia for the past's greater decorum is associated with decreased support for right‐wing populism. Studies 1 and 2 show this with vignettes. Study 3 measures support for Trump and the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. Although right‐wing populism is often seen as the result of a wave of nostalgia, our results show that this link can be disconnected and even reversed.
Previous studies on environmental issues in right‐wing populism have mostly focused on political actors and their argumentation. In contrast, this study examines environmental populist discourse from ...the perspective of laypeople in Finland. We used interviews (n = 25) to analyse affective–discursive practices in environmental talk, identifying four partly interrelated practices: belittling the ‘annoying liberals’, constructing the ordinary rural people as victims, externalizing blame to the ‘real’ polluters, and glorifying Finnish nature. These practices shed light on subject positions, affect, and functions in environmental discourse. Our contributions to the field of social psychology are threefold. First, we apply an affective–discursive approach in a novel context, deepening our understanding of affect in environmental populism. Second, we explore the nuanced features of populist reasoning and argumentation, shedding light on the functions and social implications of populist environmental discourse. Third, our analysis of identities and the discourse of laypeople provides insights into the dynamics that contribute to the polarization around environmental issues in society. We argue that the sceptical environmental discourse associated with right‐wing populism may persist precisely due to the affective and polarized nature of environmental issues.
We review the relationship between the causes and impact of rising right‐wing populism and human resource management practice, drawing on the recent experiences of the United States and the United ...Kingdom. Specifically, we explore the links between right‐wing populism and firms and their HRM practices. Although the links between declining standards of work, employment, and populism may be indirect and spatially uneven, each impacts the other in a manner that reinforces existing trends. We pay particular attention to migration and labour mobility, pay dispersion, and job and occupational security. At the level of the workplace, the populist turn undermines workforce diversity and makes transnational mobility more difficult. At the same time, structural pressures mitigating against a greater commitment to employees and their development and well‐being contribute to a general climate of insecurity, which, in turn, reinforces populism.
Climate change and the far right Forchtner, Bernhard
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change,
September/October 2019, 2019-09-00, 20190901, Volume:
10, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In recent years two crises have populated the imagination of publics: environmental crises, ranging from, for example, water and air pollution to climate change, and the crisis of liberal democracy, ...illustrated by the rise of far‐right actors across Europe, the United States and beyond. While these environmental and political crises have been analyzed on their own, little research has been done on their nexus. Against this background, this focus article reviews existing academic literature on far‐right climate‐change communication by European party and nonparty actors, that is, climate‐change communication from a distinctively ethno‐nationalist and authoritarian perspective. The far right is not a homogenous entity but best viewed as a continuum, ranging from radical‐right, anti‐liberal democracy actors to extreme‐right, anti‐democracy ones. This contribution to WIREs Climate Change argues that many, though not all, far‐right party and nonparty actors are skeptical towards (anthropogenic) climate change and/or responses to it, at least in comparison to the European mainstream. The article does so by reviewing existing research before formulating areas for further research.
This article is categorized under:
Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Social Movements
This study depicts various manifestations of what we call 'actually existing' right-wing populism. Based on empirical insights from eastern Germany, Spain, the UK and Ukraine, we explored how ...nationalist tendencies unfold in different contexts and what role agriculture and rural imageries play in this process. We analyse contextual factors (rural 'emptiness', socio-economic inequality, particularities of electoral systems, politics of Europeanization) and citizens' perceptions of social reality (selective memory, subjective experiences of democracy, national redefinition, politics of emotions). We conclude that resistance and alternatives to right-wing populism should be context-specific, grounded in the social fabric and culture of the locale.
This essay is written in response to Fujimura and Holmes’s piece “Staying the Course,” published in the December 2019 special issue of Sociological Forum—Resistance in the Twenty‐First Century.
The article conceptualizes character assassination (CA) as a tactic of populist communication on social media by using the case study of Italian politician Matteo Salvini. CA consists of personal ...attacks aimed at damaging the reputation of individuals, used as political means to attack the “enemies of the people.” By means of CA, populists operate a shift from issues and arguments toward individual traits and behaviors. CA’s importance is linked to the features of social media communication (i.e. disintermediation, speed, virality, fragmentation, emotionality). The article uses content analysis of tweets, and qualitative analysis of relevant examples; it demonstrates the strategic nature of CA in Salvini’s communication and identifies five functions (i.e. polarizing, personalizing, symbolic, discriminating, emotional) of CA in right-wing populist communication. CA’s logic is unpacked, by showing how the delegitimization of individuals is used to reinforce a populist communication strategy. Potential implications and responses to CA are discussed.
We conducted a secondary analysis of the 2018 (ninth round) European Social Survey dataset (N = 19,512, nested in 24 countries) to analyse the association between relative deprivation and right‐wing ...populist voting, moderated by participants' income and their country's GDP. A multilevel moderated model showed that relative deprivation, income and GDP had no association with right‐wing populist votes by themselves. However, income and GDP moderated the relation between relative deprivation and right‐wing populist votes, that was significant for participants with high incomes and for those living in wealthy countries. The strengths, limitations and future developments of the study are discussed.
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