2021 Book TheFacesOfContemporaryPopulism

The Faces of
Contemporary
Populism in Western
Europe and the US
Edited by
Karine Tournier-Sol
Marie Gayte
The Faces of Contemporary Populism in Western
Europe and the US
Karine Tournier-Sol · Marie Gayte
Editors
The Faces
of Contemporary
Populism in Western
Europe and the US
Editors
Karine Tournier-Sol Marie Gayte
University of Toulon University of Toulon
La Garde, France La Garde, France
ISBN 978-3-030-53888-0 ISBN 978-3-030-53889-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7
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Introduction
Populism has gone global. The last decade has proven particularly fertile
in this respect, with the year 2016 standing as a critical juncture: the unex-
pected victory of the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 was seen as a strong
signal epitomizing a new populist breakthrough, which appeared to find
an echo a few months later in the equally surprising victory of Donald
Trump in the US presidential election. From an international perspec-
tive, the Brexit vote was interpreted as a “populist moment,”1 in a larger
sequence of events going beyond the UK’s own case and borders, which
started a whole conversation on the resurgence of populism: as argued by
Rooduijn in The Guardian “Some of the most significant recent polit-
ical developments like the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald
Trump cannot be understood without taking into account the rise of
populism.”2
In the following months, other countries followed suit (Germany,
Austria, later Italy, Brazil), providing further evidence of the interna-
tional dimension of the phenomenon, which seemed to have spread to
1 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of the
Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A Plea for Both More and Less
Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019, pp. 362–372.
2 M. Rooduijn, “Revealed: One in Four Europeans Vote Populist”, The Guardian, 20
November 2018.
v
vi INTRODUCTION
every continent.3 Populist parties have gained considerable ground: in

Europe, they have tripled their vote in the past 20 years.4 But this goes
well beyond Europe, with populists now in government in almost every
part of the globe. They have successfully moved “from the margins to the
mainstream,”5 thereby redrawing the political landscape.
This apparent new wave triggered an exponential growth of the use
of the term “populism” in public debate, which went viral, notably in the
media6 where it became the “new buzzword7 ”—the obvious risks of such
an escalation being confusion and conflation, therefore calling for closer
scrutiny, relying on a precise definition of the concept of populism.
However, this unprecedented upsurge of interest in populism is not
only the preserve of the media and public debate, as it is also reflected
in the academic literature,8 further testifying to the reality of the
phenomenon at work. The increase of scholarly production on the subject
can be seen as a mirrored image of the extent and diversity of the manifes-
tations of contemporary populism. Academic interest is not new though,
far from it, and has gone through successive phases, mostly reflecting the
successive waves of the manifestations of populism itself.9
3 C. Mudde, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2017, p. 40; B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political
Style, and Representation, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 1–2.
4 M. Rooduijn, “Why Is Populism Suddenly All the Rage?” The Guardian, 20 November
2018.
5 P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the
Mainstream, Pinter, 2000.
6 M. Rooduijn, “State of the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A
Plea for Both More and Less Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019,
p. 362.
7 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017, pp. 73–74.
8 C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 9–11.
9 B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representa-
tion, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 34–35.
INTRODUCTION vii
Successive Waves and Major Landmarks

in the Research on Populism
The point here is not to enter into an exhaustive review of the literature
on populism,10 but to identify several landmarks in the field. Taking stock
of the successive attempts at conceptualizing populism and of the different
existing visions of the notion will then allow us to explicitly state the
conceptual framework adopted for this edited book, at least as a common
starting point for all the contributions—to say, in fact, where we speak
from and what we mean when we engage in this work on populism.
The first attempt at comparison and conceptualization dates back
to the 1967 conference at the London School of Economics orga-
nized by Ionescu and Gellner, and which resulted in an edited book
published in 1969.11 Although the different contributions failed to reach
a common theoretical framework for populism, this cutting-edge work
proved very instructive, opening up new avenues for academic explo-
ration. In parallel, other significant studies emerged on the subject, mostly
on Latin America,12 as well as Laclau’s first book identifying populism as
a discourse.13
The second landmark work is that of Margaret Canovan, with her 1981
seminal book Populism. In contrast with Ionescu and Gellner, her avowed
aim was not to come out with “a single essentialist definition,”14 but to
provide a typology, which eventually broke down into seven categories,
with three types of agrarian populism and four of political populism.
Although this classification proved rather limited in terms of systematic
10 See for instance B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style,
and Representation, Stanford University Press, 2016, pp. 30–43; M. Rooduijn, “State of
the Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A Plea for both More and Less
11 G. Ionescu, E. Gellner (eds.), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.
12 T. Di Tella, “Populism and Reform in Latin American”, in C. Véliz (ed.), Obstacles
to Change in Latin America, Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 47–73 ; P. H. Smith,
“Social Mobilization, Political Participation, and the Rise of Juan Perón”, Political Science
Quarterly, 84:1, 1969, pp. 30–49.
13 E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism, New
Left Books, 1977.
14 M. Canovan, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.
viii INTRODUCTION
applicability, as she herself later acknowledged,15 she already identified

two universal characteristics of populism: “the exaltation of and appeal
to ‘the people’” (on which she would later focus her work), and the
anti-elitist dimension.16
The 1990s opened up a new phase, marked by a significant growth in
scholarly work on populism, focusing mostly on radical right populism in
Western Europe,17 reflecting the manifestations of populism at that time,
but also already raising the question of the risk of conflation between
what could be identified as features of the radical right, and features of
populism. In 2000, Taggart’s book, Populism, marked another landmark,
aiming at a “universal understanding of populism” and proposing “an
ideal type”18 with common features. It provided comparative researchers
with very useful analytical tools, among which the concept of the people
as a homogenous “heartland,” as well as the “chameleonic nature” of
populism. Across the Atlantic, Kazin’s book on American populism also
represented a substantial contribution on a country which was already
vastly understudied.19
There was a significant increase in comparative studies from the
2000s.20 A major landmark in this respect came with Mudde’s defini-
tion of populism as “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to
be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups,
the ‘pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ and which argues that poli-
tics should be an expression of the ‘volonté générale’ (general will) of
the people.”21 As a thin ideology, populism can therefore be attached
15 M. Canovan, “Two Strategies for the Study of Populism”, Political Studies, 30:4,
1982, p. 552.
16 M. Canovan, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981, p. 294.
17 H. G. Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, Palgrave Macmillan,
1994 ; P. Taggart, “New Populist Parties in Western Europe”, West European Politics ,
18:1, 1995, pp. 34–51 ; P. Taggart, The New Populism and the New Politics: New Protest
Parties in Sweden in a Comparative Perspective, Macmillan, 1996.
18 P. Taggart, Populism, Open University Press, 2000, p. 7.
19 M. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Basic Books, 1995.
20 Y. Mény, Y. Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave Macmillan,
2002; D. Albertazzi, D. McDonnell (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of
Western European Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
21 C. Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39:4, 2004, p. 543
; C. Mudde, “Populism: An Ideational Approach”, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P.
INTRODUCTION ix
to various thick or host ideologies, left and right. This minimal definition
marked a decisive step in comparative research on populism, “a fruitful
move22 ” providing academics with an operational tool to work with, and
moving beyond the constant controversy which had always characterized
this field of study.
The debate still rages on, however, but there is a growing consensus
among scholars on what is called “the ideational approach,” which
considers populism as a set of ideas and encompasses Mudde’s defini-
tion. Alternative visions within this ideational approach define populism
not as an ideology, but as a style,23 a rhetoric,24 a political logic25 or a
discourse.26 Most experts also agree on its core features, namely people-
centrism and anti-elitism. The essence of the still ongoing dispute about
populism today is normative rather than conceptual,27 and is linked to
its perceived negative connotation in public debate which raises the very
question of its scientific relevance as a tool of analysis.
Finally, in terms of the volume of scholarly work, as already under-
lined, the last decade has proven particularly fertile, with what Rooduijn
calls an “explosion of populism studies.”28 This new wave of scientific
research constitutes a fourth wave, merely reflecting the expansion of
populism itself around the globe, with considerable electoral gains for
populist parties. The result should not be dismissed as merely cumula-
tive though: the scientific literature on populism is becoming richer as it
Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University
Press, 2017, pp. 27–47.
22 B. Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representa-
tion, Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 36.
23 Ibid.
24 P. Norris, R. Inglehart, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian
Populism, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
25 E. Laclau, On Populist Reason, Verso, 2005.
26 K. A. Hawkins, Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective,
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
27 C. Rovira Kaltwasser, “How to Define Populism”, in G. Fitzi, J. Mackert, B. S. Turner
(eds), Populism and the Crisis of Democracy Volume 1: Concepts and Theory, Routledge,
2019, pp. 62–63.
p. 363.
x INTRODUCTION
draws from an increasingly wide range of manifestations and case studies

in real life to analyze and learn from. Hence this mirrored image effect,
which is quite logical, as social scientists reflect on and study the world
they live in.
Aim(s) of the Book and Theoretical Framework

This edited collection aims to contribute to the political science schol-
arship on populism by focusing on the contemporary manifestations of
populism in light of the current context. In so doing, this book not only
takes stock of the previous work on populism, but also builds upon it to
further deepen our understanding of the phenomenon and take research
forward. We explore different facets of the most recent manifestations of
populism, trying to engage in new avenues as suggested by recent and
authoritative academic work. In this respect, all advice point in the same
direction: first, the necessity to explore “blind spots29 ”; second, avoid
conflation yet encourage fertilization,30 to see how populism is associ-
ated with other concepts, and how they possibly reinforce each other:
“Populism rarely travels alone. It is necessary to identify what it travels
with.”31
The approach is comparative, with a cross-regional focus on Western
Europe and the US. This is because we feel that these countries share a
comparable system of representative democracy resulting from a common
history. We put a particular emphasis on the US, with four chapters,
because while it is where the term populism was born,32 the phenomenon
in its contemporary form is largely understudied. We also devote specific
attention to the UK, with three chapters, due to the Brexit earthquake
and its common interpretation as “a populist moment,” in a country long
regarded as immune to populism, with the view to disentangling populism
from other associated factors (nativism and Euroscepticism), as advised by

Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 16.
pp. 367–368.
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 17.
32 Ibid., p. 9.
INTRODUCTION xi
Mudde and Rooduijn33 : How populist was the Brexit vote? However, the
volume is not limited to these two countries, and also explores different
manifestations of populism in several Western European states, from a
great variety of angles.
While aiming to identify commonalities, we nonetheless recognize the
heterogeneous character of populism, and the very diverse forms it comes
into, depending as it is on the national context in which it grows—the
historical, political, social, and economic background.34 Yet, this compar-
ative outlook also shows that the dynamic at work is still very similar
despite the variations.
Moreover, following Rooduijn’s cue, through this edited volume we
aspire at fertilization rather than conflation, trying to underline the links
between populism and its related concepts, analyzing the common points
and differences in the strategies at work (in- and out-group thinking, “us”
versus “them”) so as to understand what they have in common, how they
interact, and what makes them so attractive: is it populism per se or the
concepts to which it is attached?
The multidimensional approach adopted here seems particularly suit-
able for this purpose. The contributions gathered in this volume address
a wide spectrum of aspects, many of which are largely understudied. The
various case studies are not limited to the populist radical right, and also
analyze left-wing populism (with Podemos in Spain, but also addressing
the validity of applying the populist label to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour
Party in the UK); comparisons are drawn between countries (Germany
and Austria; France, Switzerland and the US) and within countries (Italy);
we study the supply side (political parties and social movements) but
also the demand side (the electorate); populism in opposition but also
in power (US, Austria, Italy); the populist discourse and rhetoric is also
analyzed through a linguistic approach; we address topics which have not
received much attention from scholars (foreign policy, religion, media-
tization, economic populist attitudes, social policy); the populist label
itself is questioned; the mainstreaming of right-wing populism is also
acknowledged.
p. 367; C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017, pp. 74–78.
34 C. Mudde, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford
University Press, 2017, p. 40.
xii INTRODUCTION
However, because of the great variety of subjects and cases tackled, and
to avoid scattering in all directions, we feel that it is crucially important
to work within a solid and consistent theoretical framework. We therefore
rely on the ideational approach of Mudde, defining populism as a thin
ideology, as a starting point for analysis in all the chapters: this minimal
definition appears particularly adapted for a comparative work such as this
one, and is also the most commonly accepted today. The goal is to provide
conceptual coherence, yet of course leaving all latitude to contributors to
distance themselves from this initial definition in their work, should they
disagree with it.
Book Outline
The volume opens on Western Europe, starting with three chapters on the
UK. The fact that the country went from being an archetypal exception to
populism, due to an alleged “immunity,” to its very exemplification calls
for closer analysis. In the first chapter, Tournier-Sol deconstructs this
apparent paradox, and studies the right-wing populist surge in the UK in
the last decade through the UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) unprece-
dented success. Special focus is devoted to the 2016 referendum and the
victory of the Brexit vote, wondering to what extent it can be consid-
ered as “a populist moment.” Although populism was clearly a factor,
Tournier-Sol shows that it is not the whole story. She also analyzes the
mainstreaming of right-wing populism at work there, with the Conserva-
tive party repositioning itself as a populist radical right party, which in fact
is not new in the UK.
The following chapter by Dick and Gifford explores how Eurosceptic
populism has been the vehicle for the profound reshaping of British poli-
tics in the Brexit period, stressing the impact of mediatization in this
process. Although British Euroscepticism has always been susceptible to
populism, the authors show that this had entered a new phase by the
time of the referendum campaign. Relying on a discourse analysis of
one of Boris Johnson’s main speeches during the campaign, they argue
that it illustrates a new style of mediatized populism, a “new” way of
“doing” politics, which delivered the leave result, and later the 2019 elec-
tion victory for the Conservative party, testifying to the radicalization of
mainstream Conservative discourse embodied by Boris Johnson.
In the third and final chapter devoted to the UK, Bell challenges
the populist label: first wondering whether populism may be accurately
INTRODUCTION xiii
applied to Jeremy Corbyn and his policies, she follows Laclau and argues
that all politicians are in fact populists, and that the label also applies to
Blair and Cameron for instance. She then enlarges her scope to question
the very utility of the concept of populism itself, considering that it has
become a form of slander which serves to delegitimize popular grievances,
precluding proper debate and fuelling disaffection with the political
system, therefore ultimately representing a real threat for democracy.
Moving on to continental Europe, the book continues the explo-
ration of left-wing populism in Spain, with Petithomme’s case study of
Podemos, also raising the question of its populist dimension. The author
argues that although the party initially used a populist strategy to re-
politicize Spanish politics, today it is better described as a classic socialist
party. In an echo to Bell’s analysis, he shows that the populist label was
used as a slur by its opponents to disqualify the party, which subsequently
attempted to reverse the stigma by making the case for a form of “demo-
cratic radicalism,” before eventually moving to a more moderate position
due to its institutionalization.
Turning to right-wing populism, the following chapter by Moreau
adopts a comparative outlook, offering a thorough analysis of the German
AfD and the Austrian FPÖ, commonly described as “sister parties.”
He studies the two parties’ ideology, discourse, program, and respective
voters, underlining common points but also differences between these two
populist radical right parties, characterized by their populism but also by
their nativism and authoritarianism. According to Moreau, the AfD and
the FPÖ are no longer protest parties but political, economic, and cultural
counter-models.
We then move on to Italy to further deepen our understanding of
right-wing populism, with a study of the Lega party by Ozzano, who
focuses more particularly on religion and its instrumentalization by the
party. He explains that its use of religion, religious values, and symbols is
very different from that of traditional centrist and Christian-Democratic
parties which developed in the twentieth century on the basis of the tradi-
tional Church vs State cleavage.35 The author shows that Salvini has trans-
formed the Lega from a regionalist into a national right-wing populist
movement, in which Christianity is used as an identity marker rather than
35 S. M. Lipset, S. Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments:

An Introduction” in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives, Free
Press, 1967, pp. 1–64.
xiv INTRODUCTION
a set of beliefs and practices, in an exclusive vision of Western/Christian

civilization against “threatening others.”
Staying in Italy for the next chapter, yet with a different approach,
as Ruccella proposes a linguistic analysis of populist rhetoric in Repub-
lican Italy. Relying on a semantic analysis, she questions the term “pop-
ulism” which she defines as a mentality. She then explores the political
discourse and rhetorical strategies of Italian leaders from across the polit-
ical spectrum, showing that the sign “populism” is systematically present
and trying to reconstruct its meaning.
The following chapter presents a quantitative study by Ivaldi and
Mazzoleni, original in many respects: first, it adopts a cross-regional
focus, comparing two Western European countries (France and Switzer-
land) and the US. Second, turning the focus to the demand side
and voters’ attitudes, it examines the understudied relationship between
populism and the economy, arguing for the importance of a specific
concept of “economic populism,” and measuring the effect of traditional
left/right cleavages.
This leads us across the Atlantic, with four chapters devoted to the
study of US populism, exploring various and often understudied aspects.
First, Boussac uses an historical approach and analyzes a particular brand
of American populism, “conservative populism,” which started in the
1960s. She describes its structural, yet paradoxical use of social policy,
drawing attention to its dual discourse on the welfare state, investigating
its historical origins and development from marginal to prominent theme
in US politics.
The following chapter analyzes another type of populist mobilization,
a social movement,36 with a case study of the Tea Party movement in
Pennsylvania by Douzou, based on fieldwork. The author shows how the
structure of the party is instrumental in their populist vision. She argues
that the rhetoric Tea Party activists use, the very nature of the movement,
and the tactics they put in place aim at changing the Republican party
from within, taking the power away from politicians and giving it back
to the people. In this sense, she demonstrates that populist rhetoric is the
glue that binds an otherwise very diverse conservative movement together
by giving it a common language, a common frame but also common aims.
36 C. Mudde, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford

INTRODUCTION xv
The two following chapters investigate Donald Trump’s brand of

populism, exploring two dimensions which have not received much atten-
tion from scholars, namely religion and foreign policy. First, Gayte’s
chapter on the religious factor echoes Ozzani’s analysis on Italy, demon-
strating the use of religion by Trump as a strategic tool, an identity marker
of White Christian America, which feels that it is fast becoming a minority
in a country its ancestors founded. She underlines the apparent paradox of
Trump as an irreligious candidate yet successfully mobilizing religion to
gather the electoral support of White Christians. Additionally, in keeping
with the comparative standpoint of this edited volume, Gayte points to
some US specificities in Trump’s brand of populism in comparison with
its European counterparts.
Finally, the last chapter by Kandel studies the populist dimension
of Trump’s foreign policy, adopting a transatlantic perspective to show
how it is actually part of an alternative vision of international rela-
tions promoted by contemporary populism, and challenging the “lib-
eral international order.” She demonstrates that the Trump presidency
and its “America First” doctrine have given increased traction to this
counter-proposal for foreign policies, further reinforced by the consoli-
dation and by new victories of populists in European countries. Kandel
argues that the challenge represented by these trends is already having a
profound impact on international relations and on the organization of the
international system.
In conclusion, Gayte and Tournier-Sol discuss the overall picture
which emerges from this comparative outlook, trying to identify the
differences and similarities between the various facets of contemporary
populism analyzed in these contributions, and shedding light on the
driving forces underlying the increasing success of populism on both sides
of the Atlantic.
Marie Gayte
Karine Tournier-Sol
Contents
Introduction v
1 From UKIP to Brexit: The Right-Wing Populist

Surge in the UK 1
Karine Tournier-Sol
2 The Brexit Referendum: How Eurosceptic Populism

Transformed UK Politics 23
Charles Dick and Chris Gifford
3 The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular Grievances 43

Emma Bell
4 Is Podemos a Populist Party? an Analysis of Its

Discourse and Political Strategy 61
Mathieu Petithomme
5 AfD and FPÖ: Rejection of Immigration—The Basis

of a Common National-Populist Identity? 79
Patrick Moreau
xvii
xviii CONTENTS
6 Populism and Religion in the Lega’s Discourse

and Policies 129
Luca Ozzano
7 Populist Rhetorics: A Linguistic Analysis

of a “Mentality” of Italian Politics in Republican Italy 147
Loredana Ruccella
8 Economic Populist Attitudes in Western Europe

and the United States 165
Gilles Ivaldi and Oscar Mazzoleni
9 Conservative Populism and the American Welfare

State Since the 1960s 181
Tamara Boussac
10 The Tea Party Movement in Pennsylvania: A New

Brand of Populism? 203
Marion Douzou
11 Religion, a Significant Factor in Donald Trump’s

Populism? 217
Marie Gayte
12 The Populist Challenge to Foreign Policy:

A Transatlantic Perspective 239
Maya Kandel
Conclusion 259
Notes on Contributors
Emma Bell is Professor of British Politics at the Université de Savoie

Mont-Blanc, France. Her research focuses on various aspects of state
authoritarianism. She has published widely, notably in the journals Race
& Class, Theoretical Criminology, Justice, Power and Resistance, La Revue
Française de la Société Britannique, and L’Observatoire de la Société
Britannique. She is the author of Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Soft Power and Freedom under the
Coalition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Tamara Boussac is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her research explores
conservative mobilizations against welfare in New York State between the
1940s and 1960s.
Mr. Charles Dick is a Ph.D. student at the University of Huddersfield
and his research is on populism and the media.
Marion Douzou is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the
University of Lyon 2 Lumière (France) and a member of Triangle (Action,
discours, pensée politique et économique). She wrote her dissertation
on the Tea Party movement in Pennsylvania. Her fieldwork was made
possible by a scholarship from the Lurcy Foundation.
xix
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Marie Gayte is Associate Professor of US Studies at Toulon University.

She coedited in 2018 Catholic and US Politics After the 2016 Election:
Understanding the Swing Vote, also with Palgrave Macmillan.
Dr. Chris Gifford is the Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes
at the University of Huddersfield. He is a political sociologist and has
presented and published widely on British Euroscepticism. He is the
author of The Making of Eurosceptic Britain ( 2014 Second Edition), and
coedited The UK Challenge to Europeanization (2015).
Gilles Ivaldi is CNRS researcher in politics at CEVIPOF (Sciences Po)
in Paris. His main research interests include French politics, elections, and
the comparative study of populism. He has recently published De Le Pen
à Trump : le défi populiste (2019); The 2017 French Presidential Elections.
A political Reformation? (2018), with Jocelyn Evans.
Maya Kandel is in charge of the US and Transatlantic Relations at the
Policy Planning Department (CAPS) of the French Ministry of Europe
and Foreign Affairs. From 2011 to 2016, she was the Program Director
and Senior Researcher in the US at the French Institute for Strategic
Research (IRSEM, French Ministry of Defense). She is also associate
researcher at University Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 (CREW Lab). She
has a previous career in journalism and television, in France, the US, and
reporting from South America. Maya Kandel holds a Ph.D. in history
from Sciences Po Paris and a Master’s Degree from Columbia Universi-
ty’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is a graduate
of Sciences Po Paris (B.A. and Master’s in International Economics).
Oscar Mazzoleni is Professor in political science at the University of
Lausanne. His main research interests include Swiss and comparative
politics, populism, and regionalism. Among his publications, Political
Populism. A Handbook (2017, with R. Heinisch and C. Holz-Bacha)
and The People and the Nation. Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics
in Europe (2020, with R. Heinisch and E. Massetti).
Patrick Moreau studied philosophy and history at the University Paris
I—Sorbonne; 1978: Ph.D.; he studied political sciences at the Institut
d’Etudes Politiques in Paris; habilitation: 1984; former scholarship
holder of the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Foundation and the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation); currently:
Centre national de la recherché scientifique, Laboratoire DYNAM, Stras-
bourg.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi
Luca Ozzano is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Univer-

sity of Turin, where he teaches “Political Science” and “Politics and Reli-
gion.” He is Convenor of the “Religion and Politics” standing group of
the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and Chair of the
research committee on “Religion and Politics” of the International Polit-
ical Science Association (IPSA). He is also Associate Editor of the journal
Political Research Exchange (Taylor and Francis/ECPR). He has written
European Culture Wars and the Italian Case: Which Side Are you on?
(with Alberta Giorgi, Routledge, 2016) and The Masks of the Political God.
Religion and Political Parties in Contemporary Democracies, forthcoming
in 2020 with ECPR Press/Rowman and Littlefield.
Mathieu Petithomme is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
the University of Burgundy-Franche-Comté (Besançon, France). He is a
specialist of Spanish Politics and Society, especially on social movements,
Catalan and Basque nationalisms and political parties.
He has recently published “Political Innovation and Democratic Partic-
ipation within Podemos in Spain” in Alexandre-Collier A., Goujon A. &
Gourgues G. (eds.), Innovations, Reinvented Politics and Representative
Democracy, London Routledge, 2020, pp. 85–100.
Loredana Ruccella holds a Ph.D. in Language Science from the Univer-
sity of Paris-Nanterre and Turin, she is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty
of Arts and Human Sciences at the University of Toulon. She is a
member of Babel, the Faculty’s research center, and is also working
with MoDyCo (Models, Dynamics, Corpus), a research center at the
University of Paris-Nanterre. Her works focuses on political and economic
communication. Among her various collaborations in collective works and
articles published in specialized journals, she has published “Onorevole
Pulcinella!”: il “linguaggio pulcinellesco” nella politica italiana, 2017; La
crise économique: on nous dit trop ou pas assez?, 2016; La traduction de
l’euphémisme économique, 2013. Her current research revolves around
populist communication in the context of Republican Italy.
Karine Tournier-Sol is Associate Professor of British politics at Toulon
University. With Chris Gifford she coedited The UK Challenge to
Europeanization: The Persistence of British Euroscepticism (Palgrave,
2015). Her most recent book is Prendre le large : le UKIP et le choix
du Brexit (Paris, Vendémiaire, 2017).
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Right-Wing Extremism (NPD) opposed to the AfD

Wings (Christian fundamentalism—CF, German
nationalism—GN, national liberalism NL, völkisch
nationalism/Identitarianism—NV) 95
Table 5.2 The FPÖ program 2017 in comparison with the program
of the Sebastian Kurz List 113
Table 8.1 Base model of economic populism in France, Switzerland,
and the US 175
Table 8.2 Full model of economic populism in France, Switzerland,
and the US 177
xxiii
CHAPTER 1
From UKIP to Brexit: The Right-Wing

Populist Surge in the UK
Karine Tournier-Sol
For a long time, the UK was seen as an exception, as fundamentally

immune to the extremism, racism, and populism which were spreading on
the continent.1 The unprecedented success of the right-wing populist UK
Independence Party (UKIP) between 2010 and 2016 marked the end of
this alleged immunity, demonstrating that the UK was also affected by the
wider populist surge at work in many other countries. The phenomenon
seemed to reach its climax with the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, which
1 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, University

of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 241; R. Griffin, “No Racism Please We’re British” in M.
Feldman (ed.), A Fascist Century: Essays by Roger Griffin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008,
pp. 117–131; M. Goodwin, “The Extreme Right in Britain: Still an ‘Ugly Duckling’ but
for How Long”, The Political Quarterly, 78:2, 2007, pp. 241–250.
K. Tournier-Sol (B)
University of Toulon, La Garde, France
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
K. Tournier-Sol and M. Gayte (eds.),
The Faces of Contemporary Populism in Western Europe and the US,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_1
2 K. TOURNIER-SOL
was largely interpreted as a populist moment2 in a larger sequence of

events including the election of Donald Trump as US president a few
months later. In a short space of time, Britain thus went from standing
as an archetypal exception to populism to its most blatant illustration—
such a dramatic shift in perception obviously calls for closer scrutiny. The
aim of this chapter is therefore to explore the right-wing populist surge in
the UK, to examine its different manifestations before and after the EU
referendum, pointing to a mainstreaming of right-wing populism which,
in fact, is not new in Britain.
The first part will deconstruct the myth of British exceptionalism
so as to understand why no distinctive right-wing populist force had
emerged before UKIP and the causes of the party’s success. Focus will
then turn to the 2016 EU referendum, wondering to what extent it
was a populist moment, by analyzing the different factors of the right-
wing populist surge it testified to and which actually extended to the
mainstream. Finally, the third section will study the mainstreaming of
right-wing populism illustrated by the progressive radicalization of the
Conservative party post-referendum, culminating in the crushing victory
of Boris Johnson at the 2019 general election.
In terms of theoretical framework, the chapter relies on Mudde’s
ideational definition of populism as a “a thin-centered ideology that
considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and
antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ and which
argues that politics should be an expression of the ‘volonté générale’
(general will) of the people,3 ” with right-wing populism more particu-
larly focusing on immigration and national sovereignty, an exclusionary
version of nationalism in cultural terms.4
2 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of the
Field: How to Study Populism and Adjacent Topics? A Plea for Both More and Less
3 C. Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39:4, 2004, p. 543;
C. Mudde, “Populism : An Ideational Approach”, in C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart,
P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University
Press, 2017, pp. 27–47.
4 B. Onikowski, D. Halikiopoulou, E. Kaufmann, M. Rooduijn, “Populism and Nation-
alism in a Comparative Perspective: A Scholarly Exchange”, Nations And Nationalism,
25:1, 2019, pp. 67–73.
1 FROM UKIP TO BREXIT: THE RIGHT-WING POPULIST SURGE IN THE UK 3
UKIP’s Unprecedented Surge

or the Emergence of the First Distinctive
Right-Wing Populist Force in the UK
Britain’s supposed immunity to populism, racism, and extremism was
mostly accounted for by institutional and cultural factors. The first refers
to the majoritarian electoral system, the first-past-the-post (FPTP), which
is seen as a brake on the emergence of insurgent parties. The second one
emphasized Britain’s civic culture, its “culture of deference”5 and moder-
ation. Yet, this “view of Britain as an intrinsically democratic and tolerant
nation6 ” was debunked by the historian Roger Griffin as an illusion: “Bri-
tain is not the exception to the rule it would like to think. (…) British
political culture contains a deeply ingrained element of racist populism
which thrives independently of credible or significant right-wing populist
party representation.7 ”
Academic research then turned the focus to the supply side, pointing
to the responsibility of the extreme right in its own repeated failure,8
with major internal factors such as ideology, factionalism, leadership, and
a subculture of violence, all of which have hampered the rise of far-right
parties which have remained marginalized in the British political system.
They have not succeeded in modernizing and normalizing as the French
Front National has in France, moving “from the margins to the main-
stream”.9 On top of this toxic dimension, the far right also suffered
from the competition of the Conservative party in the political arena.
The latter, and Margaret Thatcher in particular, played a major role in
5 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, University

of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 244; G. Almond, S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Sage Publications, 1963.
6 M. Goodwin, “The Extreme Right in Britain: Still an ‘Ugly Duckling’ but for How
Long”, The Political Quarterly, 2007, 78:2, p. 242.
7 R. Griffin, “No Racism Please We’re British” in M. Feldman (ed.), A Fascist Century:
Essays by Roger Griffin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 124–125.
8 On this subject, see for instance: M. Cronin (ed.), The Failure of British Fascism:
The Far Right and the Fight for Political Recognition, Macmillan, 1996; N. Copsey,
Contemporary British Fascism: the BNP and the Quest for Legitimacy, Palgrave Macmillan,
2008; R. Eatwell, M. Goodwin (eds.), The New Extremism in 21st Century Britain,
Routledge, 2010.
9 P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right: from the Margins to the
Mainstream, Pinter, 2000.
4 K. TOURNIER-SOL
marginalizing far-right parties, by co-opting10 their traditional themes.

The authoritarian conservatism of Thatcher allowed her to occupy the
political space which had been left to the National Front in the 1970s.
Her famous declaration in the run-up to the 1979 general election testi-
fied to the repositioning of the Conservative party: “People are really
rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with
a different culture (…) If you want good race relations, you have got to
allay peoples’ fears on numbers. (…) We do have to hold out the clear
prospect of an end to immigration11 ”. The Conservative party therefore
became the party of immigration in the 1980s, depriving the far right of
political space. Thatcher’s “right-wing populism” was thus instrumental
in marginalizing the extreme right.12
Kitschelt goes even further, considering that more than a brake, the
Conservative party of Margaret Thatcher acted as a model for the radical
right to help them find their “winning formula”: “In some ways, the
British conservatives became the model according to which emerging
NRR (new radical right) parties elsewhere in Europe could learn to
fashion their appeals.13 ” Thatcher’s Conservative party therefore acted
as a precedent, a source of inspiration for the populist radical right. Such
is the key to the myth of Britain’s supposed immunity, which is not due
to any cultural exception, but to the Conservative party and its “centrist
populism,” as embodied by Margaret Thatcher, but also Enoch Powell14
or Norman Tebbit. This centrist populism prevented the surge of populist
radical right parties in the UK on the European model. According to
Griffin, “Thus it is not only proportional representation that acts as a
barrier to right-wing populism in Britain, it is also the Conservative Party.
No foreign imports of populism thanks, we have our own15 ”. Therefore,
10 M. A. Schain, “The Extreme-Right and Immigration Policy-Making: Measuring

Direct and Indirect Effects”, West European Politics, 29:2, 2006, p. 272.
11 Margaret Thatcher Foundation: margaretthatcher.org.
12 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis,
University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 242 and 249.
13 Ibid., p. 254.
14 On Powell’s populism, see K. Tournier-Sol, “The Ambivalence of UKIP Towards
Enoch Powell’s Legacy” in O. Estèves, S. Porion (eds.), The Lives and Afterlives of Enoch
Powell: The Undying Political Animal, Routledge, 2019, pp. 162–175.
15 R. Griffin, op. cit., pp. 125–127.
rather than invoking Britain’s presumed exceptionalism, it is more accu-

rate to speak of a specificity in the manifestation of populism in the UK—a
kind of mainstream populism, traditionally embedded within both major
parties,16 which left no political space for a distinct right-wing populist
force to emerge, until UKIP’s rise from 2010. But why did UKIP succeed
where British radical right parties had failed so far?
Two main factors combined to make this unprecedented surge
possible—decisive shifts in opportunity structure and in UKIP’s own
rebranding. First, the party benefited from a propitious political environ-
ment, in the short and medium term, which resulted from the shifting
nature of British politics in the last decades.17 This shift was caused by
the political realignment of the two major parties, with Labour under
Tony Blair and the Conservatives under David Cameron converging
towards a centrist, socially liberal agenda. This strategic repositioning was
designed to maximize their electoral potential by targeting the median
voter, by chasing votes at the center, that of the coveted middle class.
Yet this convergence alienated part of the electorate, as the working class
was marginalized in the process. Part of it felt discarded by the tradi-
tional political class, which fueled disaffection and distrust, as well as the
idea of a widening gulf between part of the electorate and their elected
representatives.
This political shift was emphasized, and even exemplified, by the coali-
tion government between the Conservatives and the Liberal democrats
between 2010 and 2015. This alliance provided UKIP with new oppor-
tunities, by opening up a political space on the right of the political
spectrum, as the Conservative party moved to the center ground in its
coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The accession to power of the Lib
Dems also benefited UKIP by enhancing its status as the only alternative
to the political establishment, thereby replacing the Lib Dems as a recip-
ient for protest vote. The coalition also reinforced the idea that there was
no difference between the main parties, that they were interchangeable.
However, this particularly favorable context, with no more competi-
tion from the Conservatives, is a necessary but not sufficient condition
16 Peter Mair has demonstrated the populist dimension of Blair’s New Labour: P. Mair,
“Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy”, in Y. Meny, Y. Surel (eds.), Democracies and
the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, 2002, pp. 81–98.
17 G. Evans, A. Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, 2017.
6 K. TOURNIER-SOL
for the emergence of populist radical right parties,18 which also depends
on the ability of the parties themselves to find the “winning formula,”
or what Rydgren calls their “master frame”.19 And this is precisely what
UKIP managed to do, in a strategic populist shift undertaken under the
leadership of Nigel Farage. UKIP substantially rebranded its ideological
master frame, and successfully reworked the Eurosceptic and the Conser-
vative traditions from which it borrows into a distinctive populist narrative
which was pivotal in its unprecedented success.20 The populist dimension
of the party was there from the start, from its creation in 1993, but it
was decisively stressed by Nigel Farage from 2010. The coalition between
the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats seemed to corroborate the
idea that the three main parties were indistinguishable, thereby rein-
forcing UKIP’s populist antiestablishment discourse—the “LibLabCon.”
By stressing its anti-party and anti-system nature, the party tapped into
the discontent, and tried to appeal to those who felt alienated to support
UKIP in its self-proclaimed revolt: “the people’s army.” It offered an
alternative to those who did not recognize themselves into the centrist,
social liberal consensus. This strategy proved very effective, allowing
UKIP to optimize its electoral potential by transcending traditional left
and right cleavages. The party thereby displayed an ability to adapt to the
moving tectonic plates of British politics, in a chameleonic way which is
typical of populism.21
Immigration, which had long been part of the party’s platform, was put
at the forefront, following a successful fusion between its core policy on
Europe and the more salient issue of immigration. Reducing immigration
became UKIP’s top priority, with strong emphasis on its damaging impact
on employment, housing, and public services such as the NHS and educa-
tion, which were “under threat” as a result.22 UKIP’s discourse therefore
18 H. Kitschelt, op. cit., p. vii.

19 J. Rydgren, “Is Extreme Right-Wing Populism Contagious? Explaining the Emer-
gence of a New Party Family”, European Journal of Political Research, 44:3, 2005,
pp. 413–437.
20 K. Tournier-Sol, “Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions into a
Populist Narrative: UKIP’s Winning Formula?”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53:1,
2015, pp. 140–156.
21 P. Taggart, Populism, Open University Press, 2000, p. 4.
22 UKIP, “Create an Earthquake”, UKIP Manifesto for the European Elections, 2014,
p. 3.
progressively morphed into a populist radical right discourse under Nigel

Farage’s leadership. Their message did not carry the same toxicity as that
of the British National Party (BNP) though, because the party origi-
nates from a different political tradition, the more respectable Eurosceptic
tradition, thereby endowing the party with what Ivarsflaten calls “a repu-
tational shield.”23 Yet, it is important to underline that UKIP’s own
image is not devoid of toxicity and that the party has always had to deal
with allegations of racism. Not only has it been repeatedly infiltrated by
the BNP in the course of its history, but it also has a long record of
racist outbursts by party representatives. Farage’s discourse itself is not
unambiguous: while explicitly striving to shed the racist label attached
to UKIP’s name, the party leader made several statements with nativist
echoes. In his speech to the spring party conference in 2014, in the run-
up to the European elections, he declared: “In scores of our cities and
market towns, this country in a short space of time has frankly become
unrecognizable. Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospi-
tals, whether it is the fact that in many parts of England you don’t hear
English spoken any more. This is not the kind of community we want
to leave to our children and grandchildren.”24 Further examples include
his disparaging remarks on Romanians,25 foreigners with HIV26 or the
“Breaking point” poster he proudly released during the 2016 referendum
campaign on EU membership. There are clearly nativist undertones in
UKIP’s discourse, with an exclusionary dimension towards immigrants, a
horizontal “us” versus “them” dimension typical of the radical right, on
top of the vertical “people” versus “the elite” dimension characteristic of
populism.27 As Goodwin says, the fact is that UKIP “increasingly took on
23 E. Ivarsflaten, “Reputational Shields: Why Most Anti-Immigrant Parties Failed in

Western Europe, 1980–2005”, Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Asso-
ciation, Philadelphia, 31 August 2006. https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/papers/
2006/ivarsflatenapsa2006.pdf.
24 N. Farage, Spring conference speech in Torquay, 28 February 2014.
25 LBC interview, 16 May 2014.
26 ITV Leaders’ Debate, 2 April 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc6YH4-
IHME.
Plea for both More and Less Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019,
p. 365.
8 K. TOURNIER-SOL
the trappings of a radical right party.28 ” Although ethno-nationalism29 is

not part of the party’s core ideology, it progressively became part of its
political platform and a key ingredient of its “winning formula.”
UKIP was a major agent of politicization, not only of Europe, but also
of immigration in the British political debate. Its unprecedented success
gave the party an impact on the national game of British politics. It
contributed to shape policy agenda on these two issues, with mainstream
parties radicalizing their discourse in an attempt to co-opt these issues
and recapture their electorate.30 This is particularly true of the Conserva-
tive party, for which UKIP was seen as a growing electoral threat. David
Cameron’s 2013 EU referendum pledge has to be seen in this light, as
a tactical move to “shoot the UKIP fox,” although it also responded to
the growing Euroscepticism of the parliamentary Conservative party, with
26.5% identifying as hard Eurosceptics,31 i.e., advocating withdrawal or
referendum.
UKIP’s surge therefore testifies to the rise of right-wing populism in
the UK, raising the question as to whether it actually acted as the catalyst
of the victory of the Brexit vote.
UKIP, Populism, and the Brexit Vote

The victory of the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 had a seismic impact
on British politics, also sending a shockwave through the world at large.
From an international perspective, this unexpected vote was widely seen
as epitomizing a populist breakthrough, which appeared to find an echo
a few months later in the equally surprise victory of Donald Trump in the
US presidential election. The Brexit vote was interpreted as a “populist
28 M. Goodwin, J. Dennison, “The Radical Right in the United Kingdom”, J. Rydgren

(ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 535.
29 J. Rydgren, “The Sociology of the Radical Right”, Annual Review of Sociology, 33,
2007, pp. 241–262.
Direct and Indirect Effects”, West European Politics, 29:2, 2006, p. 271; A. Menon,
J. P. Salter, “Brexit: initial reflections”, International Affairs, 92:6, 2016, p. 1305.
31 T. Heppell, “Cameron and Liberal Conservatism: Attitudes within the Parliamen-
tary Conservative Party and Conservative Ministers”, The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations, 15:3, 2013, p. 347.
moment,”32 in a larger sequence of events going beyond the UK’s own

case and borders. Yet, while populism is a world-wide phenomenon, with
common characteristics, it is context-sensitive, and needs to be placed into
national context to get the full picture.33
The Brexit vote stands in the continuity of UKIP’s surge, which had
already testified to the rise of right-wing populism in the UK, relying on
the triptych Euroscepticism/anti-immigration/populism. UKIP’s influ-
ence on the political debate, which had been a major factor in David
Cameron’s decision to hold the EU referendum, extended to the refer-
endum campaign. UKIP’s impact on the campaign actually went beyond
its organization, Leave.EU, and its right-wing populist rhetoric perme-
ated the whole Leave camp. The official and more mainstream group,
Vote Leave, which predominantly gathered Conservative figures, with
political heavyweights such as the former London Mayor Boris Johnson
and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, as well as a few Labour MPs, co-
opted some of the party’s ideas—be it its very effective slogan, “Take
back control,” which had long been part of UKIP’s rhetoric, or Boris
Johnson’s urging voters to make 23 June UK’s “Independence Day,”
in an echo to Nigel Farage. In the last weeks of the campaign, Vote
Leave opted to fight on the same political ground as UKIP, and switched
its focus to immigration. Like Farage’s party, it raised the specter of
Turkey’s supposedly imminent accession to the EU and even adopted
UKIP’s immigration policy, a selective immigration based on a system
of points on the Australian model. While co-opting part of UKIP’s ideas
and rhetoric, Vote Leave tried to isolate UKIP and Nigel Farage as polit-
ical actors34 because of their perceived toxicity. Its campaign director,
Dominic Cummings, later considered that had Farage been the most
32 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of

33 C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 574; B. Onikowski, D.
Halikiopoulou, E. Kaufmann, M. Rooduijn, “Populism And Nationalism in a Comparative
Perspective: A Scholarly Exchange”, Nations And Nationalism, 25:1, 2019, pp. 75–76.
Direct and Indirect Effects”, West European Politics, 29:2, 2006, p. 271.
10 K. TOURNIER-SOL
prominent public face of the Leave campaign, he would have lost the
Leave camp over 600,000 votes.35
Arithmetically, UKIP contributed for about a quarter of the Brexit
vote, the bulk of which mainly came from Conservative voters.36
Looking into the demographics of the vote, there are strong similarities
between the electoral profile of the Leave voter and that of the UKIP
supporter37 —portrayed as the “left-behind” voter, typically a white, old
male lacking qualifications and skills. This group was identified as one
of the three groups making up the Leave vote by a NatCen study38 ;
while representing 12% of the population, it had the strongest propor-
tion of Leavers in its ranks (95%). The other two are on the one hand
“affluent Eurosceptics,” who are more conservative and more middle
class than the first group, and on the other hand “older working-classes,”
socially different from the “left behind” and more conservative. However,
the vote actually went beyond politics and demographics, with values
and identity as key factors. The Libertarian-Authoritarian scale is particu-
larly relevant here, with a strong correlation between the Leave vote and
people identifying with authoritarian values.39 This also corresponds to
the profile of UKIP voters, described as socially conservative and author-
itarian.40 The Leave vote actually cut across traditional party lines, across
left and right cleavages, the way which UKIP had succeeded in doing in
the years prior to the referendum following its strategic populist shift. This
tends to suggest that there are clearly common points between the UKIP
vote and the Brexit vote, even though the second cannot be reduced to
the first. They proceed from a similar phenomenon. The Brexit vote can
35 Dominic Cummings blog, https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-

referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-sto
rm-2/.
36 Conservative voters represented 40% of the Leave vote (by 2015 general election
vote). Lord Ashcroft, “How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why”, Lord
Ashcroft Polls, 24 June 2016.
37 M. Goodwin, O. Heath, “The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind: An
Aggregate-level Analysis of the Result”, The Political Quarterly, 87:3, 2016, pp. 323–332.
38 K. Swales, Understanding the Leave Vote, Natcen Social Research, 2016.
39 66% of those identifying as authoritarian voted Leave. Ibid., p. 16.
40 J. Curtice, “A Revolt on the Right? The Social and Political Attitudes of UKIP
Supporters”, British Social Attitudes 32, 2015, NatCen Social Research.
thus be seen as an extension of the right-wing populist surge which had

already materialized in UKIP’s unprecedented rise.
Yet, although populism is one of the drivers of the right-wing populist
surge, it is not the only one—it is one of the ingredients of the winning
formula. The same applies for the Brexit vote under study here, which
is multifaceted. There were many factors at work in this vote, which, it
is important to underline, was not an election, but a referendum41 —the
populist tool par excellence which offers only a binary choice, here Leave
or Remain. As such, it tends to exacerbate positions and intensify polariza-
tion, leaving no room for nuance. Each camp accommodates a coalition
of different forces, beyond traditional left and right cleavages. While the
Leave camp mostly gathered right-wing politicians (essentially from the
Conservative party and UKIP), it also included a few Labour MPs (such as
Gisela Stuart or Frank Field for instance), as well as supporters of “Lexit”
(left exit), standing against what they see as the neoliberal capitalism of
the EU. The latter was made up of the Socialist Workers Party and other
small revolutionary groups. The Leave side therefore brought together
different people, campaigning for Brexit for very different reasons—even
campaigning for different sorts of Brexits, as there were various options
available, although this was not discussed during the campaign. This
would later partly account for the Brexit conundrum which followed the
vote. This plurality of opinions was also reflected in the coalition of voters
making up the Leave vote. As for the Remain camp, even though it also
cut across party lines, with Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats,
it was certainly more homogeneous in terms of vision, gathering the
“pluralist, liberal, centrist” British elite—what Rafael Behr would later
call a “tribe,” “the ruling class of Remainia”42 —, which made them a
particularly easy target for populist reaction43 .
While the populist dimension of the Brexit vote is widely acknowl-
edged among scholars,44 it is certainly not the whole story though.
41 G. Evans, A. Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, 2017; C. Mudde, The
Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017.
42 R. Behr, “How Remained Failed: The Inside Story of a Doomed Campaign”, The
Guardian, 5 July 2016.
43 G. Evans, A. Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, 2017, p. 68.
alism in a Comparative Perspective: A Scholarly Exchange”, Nations And Nationalism, 25:
1, 2019, pp. 58–81; C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017.
12 K. TOURNIER-SOL
Building on Rooduijn, the aim here is to try and disentangle populism

from other associated factors in this vote, namely nativism and Euroscep-
ticism.45 Each one of these factors will be isolated to discuss its impact on
the vote, while also wondering how these concepts are related and how
they work together in the case of the UK.
Mudde defines populism as a thin ideology opposing the people to the
elite, in a vertical dimension. In a national context of growing distrust and
disillusionment towards the establishment, the EU referendum offered
disaffected British voters a rare opportunity. Its unexpected result clearly
expressed the rejection, by a majority of the electorate, of the political
establishment, the experts, and their advice.46 Voters did not hesitate
to go against the status quo and to opt for an unknown future. The
populist rhetoric permeated the campaign, and not only from “the usual
suspects,” namely the populist anti-establishment UKIP. Of course, Nigel
Farage articulated a populist discourse, presenting the referendum as an
opportunity for the people to “put two fingers up to the political class.”47
Yet Vote Leave, which was made up of establishment politicians (mostly
Tories), also played that card, with for instance Justice Secretary Michael
Gove declaring in a TV interview that “people in this country have had
enough of experts,”48 or Boris Johnson regularly denouncing the elite in
his Daily Telegraph column.49 The campaign was therefore characterized
by a form of mainstream populism. This certainly struck a chord with
the disaffected voters who felt discarded by the elite, with 58% of Leave
voters agreeing with the statement: “politicians do not listen to people
like me.”50
Yet, populism is not inherently nativist (or ethno-nationalist in
Rydgren’s definition51 ). The association between the two concepts is a
Plea for both More and Less Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019,
p. 367.
46 G. Evans, A. Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, 2017.
47 Andrew Grice, “David Cameron Wanted to Unite Us—He Has Just Shown How
Divided we Really Are”, The Independent, 24 June 2016.
48 Sky News Interview, 3 June 2016.
49 G. Evans, A. Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, 2017, p. 65.
50 K. Swales, Understanding the Leave Vote, Natcen Social Research, 2016, p. 20.
51 Jens Rydgren, “The Sociology of the Radical Right”, Annual Review of Sociology,
33, 2007, pp. 241–262.
characterizing feature of the populist radical right. According to Mudde

and Rooduijn, the Brexit vote was “at least as much about nativism as
about populism.52 ” Several studies show that immigration was indeed a
key driver of the Leave vote.53 Goodwin and Milazzo more particularly
look into how immigration influenced the vote, demonstrating that “it
was changes in immigration at the local level which exerted a particularly
strong influence on the referendum outcome.”54 Immigration was there-
fore central in delivering the Leave vote, which is not surprising given
its increased salience in the years before the referendum, reflected in the
unprecedented surge of UKIP. However, although nativism and populism
are two different concepts that need to be differentiated when accounting
for the Brexit vote, their association is also interesting to examine. After
all, it might be argued that they proceed from a similar exclusionary
mechanism, a dualist vision of the world between an in-group and an
out-group, an “us” versus “them.” Several studies actually show that
they tend to reinforce each other, in a compounding effect. Iakhnis et al
look into the interaction of anti-elitism and nativism in the Brexit vote
specifically, demonstrating that there was indeed a relationship between
anti-elite sentiment and support for leaving the EU among voters “with
high nativist sentiment.”55 This confirms research in US politics by Zhang
and Bonikowski who show that populism and ethno-nationalism interact
to increase the salience of exclusionary beliefs. Yet, according to them,
this is not so much the result of preexisting attitudes as of “the bundling
of anti-elite talk with ethno-nationalism in public discourse, which has
turned populism into a form of dog-whistle politics.”56 UKIP is a typical
52 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of

Focus”, European Journal of Political Research, 58:1, 2019, p. 367.
53 K. Swales, Understanding the Leave Vote, Natcen Social Research, 2016, p. 13; H.
Clarke, P. Whiteley, M. Goodwin, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union,
54 M. Goodwin, C. Milazzo, “Taking Back Control? Investigating the Role of Immigra-
tion in the 2016 Vote for Brexit”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
19:3, 2017, p. 452.
55 E. Iakhnis, B. Rathbun, J. Reifler, T. J. Scotto, “Populist referendum: Was ‘Brexit’
an Expression of Nativist and Anti-Elitist Sentiment?”, Research and Politics, 5:2, 2018,
pp. 1–7.
56 B. Bonikowski, Y. Zhang, “Populism as Dog-Whistle Politics: Anti-Elite Discourse
and Sentiments Toward Minorities in the 2016 Presidential Election”, Working Paper,
14 K. TOURNIER-SOL
example of this. The idea is that the discourse of the radical right has
infused the political debate so much that people are conditioned to draw
that association; articulating a populist discourse would therefore auto-
matically activate nativist echoes: the two concepts, although analytically
distinct, would thus go hand in hand,57 even unconsciously. However,
this is not the case for left-wing populism, which shows that populism
itself does not necessarily rely on exclusionary nativism; it certainly reflects
the fact that the right-wing discourse is more pervasive in Western coun-
tries today, the surge of left-wing populist parties being more recent and
also more limited.
Finally, Euroscepticism is an old political tradition in the UK, predating
Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973.
Concerns about national sovereignty in particular and reluctance towards
the supranational dimension of the EEC go back to its very creation and
were widely debated in the House of Commons when Britain first applied
for membership in 1961. With the Maastricht treaty as a decisive turning
point, British Euroscepticism became progressively entrenched in poli-
tics and public opinion—a systemic feature.58 The defense of national
sovereignty articulated in the British Eurosceptic discourse is an expres-
sion of nationalism—more precisely of English nationalism according to
Wellings,59 which is congruent with public opinion studies showing a link
between Englishness and the Leave vote,60 Englishness and Euroscepti-
cism, and, interestingly enough, Englishness and anti-immigration views
as well as Englishness and support for UKIP.61 Moreover, Euroscepti-
cism is also closely linked with populism in the British case, as Gifford has
Harvard University, 2017. Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bonikowski/

files/bonikowski_and_zhang_-_populism_as_dog-whistle_politics.pdf.
alism in a Comparative Perspective: A Scholarly Exchange”, Nations and Nationalism,
25:1, 2019, p. 60.
58 K. Tournier-Sol, C. Gifford, Chris, (eds.), The UK Challenge to Europeanisation: The
Persistence of British Euroscepticism, Palgrave, 2015, p. 1.
59 B. Wellings, “Losing the Peace: Euroscepticism and the Foundations of Contempo-
rary English Nationalism”, Nations and Nationalism, 2010, 16:3, p. 503.
60 Lord Ashcroft, “How the United Kingdom Voted on Thursday… and Why”, Lord
Ashcroft Polls, 24 June 2016.
61 R. Wyn Jones et al., “England and its Two Unions: The Anatomy of a Nation and its
Discontents”, IPPR, 2013; C. Jeffery et al., “Taking England Seriously: The New English
Politics”, 2014.
demonstrated the intrinsically populist nature of British Euroscepticism.62

In post-imperial Britain, the nationalist discourse framed Europe as “the
other” of British political identity and interests, directly appealing to “the
people” versus a pro-European elite in a double horizontal and vertical
“us versus them” dichotomy. In UKIP’s rhetoric, the British political elite
has surrendered the country’s sovereignty to an undemocratic power in
Brussels, and the people need to take it back. The Eurosceptic discourse
describes Britain as fundamentally different from its continental European
neighbors. Nationalism, Euroscepticism, and populism are therefore inex-
tricably linked together in the British context. They have reinforced one
another, with the press playing a major role in disseminating this vision
since the 1980s (see chapter by Dick and Gifford in this volume).
Populism was therefore a major element of the Brexit vote, which
resulted from the interplay of different but often interrelated factors. The
EU referendum confirmed that the right-wing populist surge also affected
the UK, as evidenced by UKIP’s earlier rise, but also extending beyond
the insurgent party itself.
The Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Populism: The

Radicalization of The Conservative Party
The mainstreaming of right-wing populism observed during the refer-
endum campaign did not cease with the vote, on the contrary. As the
Leave vote was largely interpreted as a right-wing populist signal, the
Conservative party reacted by trying to recapture this political ground.
Three main phases can be distinguished in this process.
First, when Theresa May came to power following the resignation of
David Cameron after the referendum, the political choices she made indi-
cated a right-wing turn. She opted for a hard Brexit, repeating endlessly
(and rather cryptically) “Brexit means Brexit”: because immigration was
seen as a key driver of the Brexit vote, free movement had to stop, so
that the UK would leave the single market and the customs union. This
was not the only option available—yet this is the one she chose right
from the start, letting herself get trapped by the hard-line Brexiteers
62 C. Gifford, The Making of Eurosceptic Britain, Ashgate, 2014. “The Rise of Post-
Imperial Populism: The Case of Right-Wing Euroscepticism in Britain”, European Journal
of Political Research, 45:5, 2006, pp. 851–869.
16 K. TOURNIER-SOL
in her party and laying down “red lines”63 which eventually she could
not stick to, a strategic error she would later pay with her resignation
following the third rejection by the House of Commons of the withdrawal
agreement she had negotiated with her EU partners. Moreover, in the
early weeks of her premiership, she repositioned the Conservative party
firmly on UKIP ground, adopting similar right-wing populist rhetoric
and policies (on immigration, crime, grammar schools) in an effort to
recapture its electorate. The speech she delivered at her first Conserva-
tive annual conference as party leader, in October 2016, can be seen
as an archetypal right-wing populist speech, both in tone and content.
She directly appealed to the people (“the ordinary working-class people,”
“people who can just about manage”) against “the privileged few”64 :
“Just listen to the way a lot of politicians and commentators talk about the
public. They find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immi-
gration parochial, your views about crime illiberal, your attachment to
your job security inconvenient.” This co-optation of UKIP’s discourse
and ideas demonstrates the influence of Nigel Farage’s party beyond its
effective Westminster representation,65 and its ability to frame the polit-
ical debate. This is all the more ironic that UKIP was becoming irrelevant,
having lost its raison d’être as well as its charismatic and emblematic
leader. And yet, its political platform was absorbed by the Conservative
party because of its electoral potential. May’s party therefore became the
party of Brexit (and related issues such as immigration), depriving UKIP
of political ground. The insurgent party, embroiled in internal feuding
and scandals, failed to find a new impetus after the referendum. However,
two years later, the Brexit stalemate and May’s withdrawal agreement with
the EU, which fell short of hard-Brexiteers’ expectations, opened up a
new political space which Nigel Farage opportunely seized, announcing
the creation of a new political movement, the Brexit party—a kind of
UKIP 2.0, as the original was then drifting to the far right under Gerard
Batten’s leadership.
63 In her January 2017 speech on “The government’s negotiating objectives for exiting
the EU”, she famously declared: “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-negotiating-objectives-
for-exiting-the-eu-pm-speech.
64 T. May, speech at the Conservative conference, 5 October 2016.
65 The party had one MP at that time, Douglas Carswell, an ex-Conservative MP who
left UKIP in March 2017 to sit as an independent.
This makes up the second phase in the process of radicalization of the

Conservative party, or in other words, of the mainstreaming of right-
wing populism in the UK. The Brexit party’s meteoric rise served as a
wake-up call to the Conservative party. It was launched only six weeks
before the 2019 European elections—elections which should never have
taken place in the UK, and which epitomized May’s failure to come
to terms with Brexit, three years after the vote. Nigel Farage success-
fully capitalized on this, displaying once more an ability to capture the
national mood and adapt to his political environment. While the Brexit
party’s message was meant to be clear and simple (in contrast with the
Conservative party and Labour), as reflected in its very appellation, it
actually went beyond the “clean-break” Brexit it advocated. The Brexit
party is a populist movement, inspired by the Italian Five Star Move-
ment, which aims at challenging the political establishment, “launching a
revolution in British politics.” It denounced the “great betrayal” of the
“Westminster traitors.” This message deeply resonated with Leave voters,
as Nigel Farage’s new force won the European elections with 31.6% of the
vote cast, humiliating the Conservative party which came fifth with only
8.8% of the vote. In a complete role reversal, the Brexit party instantly
deprived the Conservatives of the political space it had been occupying
since the referendum. Once more, like UKIP before it, Nigel Farage’s
party succeeded in channeling the frustration and discontent of Leave
voters. This resounding victory left no doubt as to the future direction of
the Conservative party, acting as a trigger for further radicalization and
opening the way for an overtly right-wing populist leadership, with Boris
Johnson the clear favorite.
This is phase number three: to fight off the Brexit party’s challenge and
recapture Leave voters, the new Conservative Prime Minister absorbed
the populist party’s platform, promising to leave the EU on 31 October
2019 “do or die,” even at the cost of a no deal, and developing an explicit
populist narrative opposing Parliament and the people: Westminster was
made responsible for blocking Brexit against “the will of the people.”
There ensued a confrontation between the executive and Parliament in a
series of dramatic twists reflecting a poor image of the cradle of parlia-
mentary democracy. On 28 August 2019, Boris Johnson first provoked
outrage by announcing the prorogation of Parliament for five weeks from
9 September to 14 October, an unusually long period. This was seen as a
tactical move to shut down debate and therefore opposition in Westmin-
ster over Brexit in the run-up to the withdrawal date of 31 October. The
18 K. TOURNIER-SOL
House of Commons reacted by passing a bill preventing a no-deal Brexit,

with the support of 21 Tory rebels, who were immediately suspended
from the party, depriving the Conservative party of its majority in the
Commons. This purge of the moderates marked a further and decisive
step in the party’s radicalization. Boris Johnson then tried to force an
early general election but was defeated twice. Parliament was prorogued,
but reconvened two weeks later, after the Supreme Court ruled that the
suspension was unlawful. This sequence of events was characterized by
an escalation of populist rhetoric in the Conservative ranks, with inflam-
matory language being used inside and outside the House of Commons,
symptomatic of a new anti-parliamentarianism espoused by the party. This
was articulated by Boris Johnson in his speech to the party conference, in
a typically straightforward language:
If parliament were a laptop, then the screen would be showing, I’m afraid,
the pizza wheel of doom. If parliament were a school, Ofsted would be
shutting it down or putting it in special measures. If parliament were a
reality TV show the whole lot of us, I’m afraid, would have been voted out
of the jungle by now. But at least we could have watched the speaker being
forced to eat a kangaroo testicle. And the sad truth is that voters have more
say over ‘I’m A Celebrity’ than they do over this House of Commons,
which refuses to deliver Brexit, refuses to do anything constructive and
refuses to have an election. (…) After three and a half years people are
beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools and they are beginning
to suspect that there are forces in this country that simply don’t want Brexit
delivered at all. And if they turn out to be right in that suspicion, then I
believe there will be grave consequences for trust in our democracy.66
Westminster was not the only target though, as the decision of the
Supreme Court was also denounced by some Tory MPs, among whom
the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who talked
of a “constitutional coup.” This targeting of the judicial elite echoed the
right-wing media and politicians’ reaction to the November 2016 deci-
sion by the High Court that Parliament should have a say on triggering
Article 50 to start the UK’s exit from the EU.67
66 B. Johnson, Conservative party conference speech, 2 October 2019.

67 The Daily Mail had branded the three “out of touch” judges as “enemies of the
people” on its front page, while the headline of The Daily Telegraph read “the judges
versus the people”, both papers showing the pictures of the three judges. Conservative
This significant populist turn by Boris Johnson’s party was confirmed

by the following general election campaign, in which the Conservatives
claimed to speak on behalf of the British people, promising to “respect the
democratic will of the people” and “get Brexit done.” This was the central
message of the party which fought on a right-wing populist platform, with
tough policies on immigration and crime.68 It took up what had been
UKIP’s immigration policy, namely a selective immigration based on a
system of points on the Australian model. This right-wing positioning
on cultural issues was combined with a left-wing shift on the economy—
the exact reverse of David Cameron’s premiership. In a clear and explicit
appeal to the “left-behind” voters, the Conservatives pledged to increase
government spending on public services (NHS, education, police), a crit-
ical departure from austerity policies the party had been implementing
since 2010. Such was the substance of Boris Johnson’s version of “one
nation conservatism69 ” which aimed at securing the support of Conser-
vative and Labour Leavers in this election. This was a major success, as the
Conservative party won a historic victory, securing 43.6% of the national
vote and breaking “the red wall,” i.e., claiming traditional Labour seats
in the Midlands and the north of England. In his election victory speech,
Boris Johnson reiterated his commitment to lead a one-nation Conserva-
tive government—“the people’s government”—, repeatedly referring to
“the people.” In the continuity of his previous populist narrative opposing
the people and Parliament, he suggested that he intended to close the rift
and bring Parliament, i.e., representative democracy, in line with popular
and UKIP MPs and representatives had also pitted the people against the elite, with
Backbench Tory MP David TC Davies tweeting: “Unelected judges calling the shots.
This is precisely why we voted out. Power to the people!”; Suzanne Evans, then UKIP
leadership candidate, tweeted “How dare these activist judges attempt to overturn our
will? It’s a power grab & undermines democracy. Time we had the right to sack them.”
She later deleted the tweet.
68 Conservative party, “Get Brexit Done”, Conservative Manifesto for the 2019 General
Election, p. 64.
69 The term comes from Benjamin Disraeli and his political novel, Sybil, or the Two
Nations (1845), in which he described Britain as: “Two nations between whom there is
no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts,
and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets:
the rich and the poor.”
20 K. TOURNIER-SOL
will: “Parliament must change so that we in parliament are working for

you, the British people.70 ”
Right-wing populist parties per se recorded poor scores in this election,
with 2% for the Brexit party and 0.1% for UKIP. However, these results
are not representative of Nigel Farage’s actual influence, which goes
well beyond this. The victory of the Brexit party in the European elec-
tions acted as a decisive trigger to the radicalization of the Conservative
party and its right-wing populist turn. Once more, the mainstream party
combined a strategy of exclusion and inclusion, in an echo to the refer-
endum campaign, with Dominic Cummings a key strategist again, this
time as Boris Johnson’s chief special adviser. Nigel Farage was excluded
as a political actor and refused the official electoral pact he was offering to
the Conservatives. He came under great pressure from the Conservative
party and from within his own ranks to stand down most of his Brexit
party candidates so as to avoid splitting the Leave vote, which he even-
tually did after Boris Johnson agreed to one final concession: he ruled
out any extension of the transition period beyond 31 December 2020.
The Conservative party included much of the Brexit party’s platform to
recapture its political ground and the electorate that comes with it. Nigel
Farage was therefore sidelined as a person, but his ideas were (again)
vindicated in this election which witnessed the mainstreaming of right-
wing populism: although right-wing populist parties did not score well,
right-wing populism definitely did.
Conclusion
There has therefore been a right-wing populist surge in the UK in the
last decade. First reflected by UKIP’s unprecedented rise, it gradually
extended to the mainstream with the Conservative party increasingly co-
opting UKIP’s right-wing populist rhetoric and ideas. This was illustrated
by the referendum campaign which was marked by a mainstreaming of
right-wing populism which appeared to resonate with the electorate as
demonstrated by the victory of the Brexit vote. As the Conservative party
tried to recapture this political ground post-referendum, it gradually repo-
sitioned itself as a radical right populist party, moving from liberal to social
conservatism—a self-proclaimed “one nation conservatism.” Whether this
70 B. Johnson, 13 December 2019.

new positioning actually holds remains to be seen, given the diverging

interests of the “two nations” which make up Boris Johnson’s electorate
as Brexit unfolds.
However, it is important to underline that this realignment of the
Conservative party is neither unnatural nor completely aberrant. There
had always been some kind of porosity between the Conservative party
and UKIP, which borrows from the Conservative tradition.71 Ideologi-
cally speaking, UKIP has always shared many similarities with the right
wing of the Conservative party, which is why it has long been seen as
a mere splinter group of the Tories. This proximity was reflected in the
numerous Conservative defections to UKIP over the years, but also by the
threat UKIP was representing for the electoral prospects of the Conser-
vative party: UKIP’s (and later the Brexit party’s) surge meant that the
parties were competing for a common political ground, which explains
the realignment of the Conservative party. Their positioning was there-
fore compatible, and was in fact more a question of scale as stated by Bale:
“Farage’s parties have played a huge role in driving the Conservatives to
the right, but only because the differences between them and the Tories
have only ever been of degree rather than kind.”
Actually, it is not the first time that the Conservative party adapts itself
following competition for political ground with the radical right. As we’ve
seen, Margaret Thatcher had already repositioned her party in response
to the threat of the National Front in the 1970s. This is precisely this
pragmatic capacity for co-optation and realignment which prevented the
rise of a distinctive right-wing populist force before UKIP: the Conserva-
tive party’s mainstream populism acted as a brake on the surge of populist
radical right parties on the European model.
Today, right-wing populist parties such as UKIP and the Brexit party
may well be dead, but right-wing populism is alive and well in the UK.
This testifies to Nigel Farage’s actual influence on the national polit-
ical game: “Brexit provides perhaps the most striking illustration yet of
populist radical right parties – first the UK Independence Party (UKIP)
71 K. Tournier-Sol, “Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions into a

Populist Narrative: UKIP’s Winning Formula?”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53:1,
2015, pp. 140–156.
22 K. TOURNIER-SOL
and then its effective successor the Brexit Party – wielding, and indeed
effectively achieving, power without winning office.72 ”
72 T. Bale, “Brexit Shows How the Populist Right Can be Powerful Without Winning
Office”, UK in a Changing Europe, 11 December 2019. The article was originally
published in The Washington Post under the title: “Brexit shows how a tiny party can
have big consequences”, 2 December 2019.
CHAPTER 2
The Brexit Referendum: How Eurosceptic

Populism Transformed UK Politics
Charles Dick and Chris Gifford
This chapter explores how Eurosceptic populism has been the vehicle for
the transformation of British politics in the Brexit period. In so doing we
provide a detailed examination of a major speech on the topic of leaving
the European Union (EU), given by Boris Johnson1 in London on 9
May 2016 during the referendum campaign. The adoption of a discursive
Eurosceptic populism by leading Conservative politicians placed populism
at the heart of British politics and was central to the victory for leaving the
EU. Johnson’s speech can be seen as a seminal moment in this process
1 Boris Johnson, 2016, “Boris Johnson’s Speech on the EU Referendum”, 9th

May. Retrieved from: https://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2016/05/boris-
johnsons-speech-on-the-eu-referendum-full-text.html.
C. Dick · C. Gifford (B)

School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate,
Huddersfield, UK
C. Dick

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_2
24 C. DICK AND AND C. GIFFORD
of transformation and indicative of a new style of mediatised populism

which delivered the Leave result and the 2019 election victory for the
Conservatives.
We begin by outlining the central concepts that inform the chapter,
examining how opposition to the EU has taken the form of a compelling
Eurosceptic populism that successfully combines popular sovereignty,
anti-elitism, and exclusionary elements. We go onto explore the rela-
tionship between the UK and the EU, in particular focusing on the
Eurosceptic traditions which can be found across British political insti-
tutions. Since the 1950s, deeply rooted political cultural representations
of Britain, as profoundly different and separate from Europe, have been
evident in the UK’s relationship to European integration. The recent
emergence of populist opposition to the EU was not the antithesis of
established and mainstream positions on Europe but a new variation of
hegemonic Euroscepticism. In Mudde’s terms, we therefore view UK
Eurosceptic populism as a form “pathological normalcy” that is entirely
consistent with the approach of British elites to European integration.2
It is a radicalization of mainstream views and intimately connected to
broadly shared attitudes and policy positions towards the EU and is
important in explaining the ease with which it has been adopted by
the mainstream Conservatives in the UK. Additionally, underpinning this
analysis is the context of a mediatized politics; vital for understanding
the background and political trajectory of Boris Johnson. Our analysis of
one of Johnson’s main campaign speeches during the referendum demon-
strates in detail the strategic application of a populist and mediatized
Euroscepticism and evidences the right-wing radicalization of mainstream
Conservative discourse. The implication of this is that the UK is entering
a new era of representative “democracy” in which a media-driven political
class look to constitute a “tyranny” of the populist majority in order to
secure legitimacy.
2 Cas Mudde, “The Populist Radical Right: A Pathological Normalcy”, West European
Politics, 33:6, 2010, pp. 1167–1186, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2010.508901.
2 THE BREXIT REFERENDUM: HOW EUROSCEPTIC … 25
Eurosceptic Populism
Populism is a difficult concept to nail down analytically, with myriad
forms recorded across its history. Using previous literature3 on how best
to identify populism, three core elements were identified to be used
in the analysis. Firstly, a tendency toward “people-centrism” and “pop-
ular sovereignty,” is key to understanding populism. This may constitute
appeals to the general will of the people, or advocating for “the people”
to become more central to politics. Second, there is a critique of the elites
in society, characterized as “anti-elitism.” Finally, “the people” are largely
characterized as being homogenous, with outsiders perceived as a threat.
This can also manifest as “nativism” or “exclusionary attitudes,” espe-
cially among right-wing populists. However, Sanders, Molina Hurtado, &
Zoragastura,4 argue that left-wing populists can display exclusionary atti-
tudes as well, particularly in relation to those perceived as “class-enemies”
of the people. Finally, in terms of how populism attempts to under-
stand and provide legitimate answers for issues within society, Gerghina,
Miscoiu, and Soare,5 note that populism understands society in antago-
nistic and simplified terms, often emphasizing instinctual and emotional
reaction to events.
Eurosceptic populism is largely based around an appeal to popular
sovereignty and an exclusive conception of British national identity.6 In
order to fully capture the concept for analytical purposes, we will combine
3 Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39:4, 2004,
pp. 542–563; Cas Mudde, Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary
Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America”, Government and
Opposition, 48:2, 2013, pp. 147–174, https://doi.org/0.1017/gov.2012.11; Matthijs
Rooduijn, “The Nucleus of Populism: In search of the Lowest Common Denomina-
tor”, Government and Opposition, 49:4, 2014, pp. 573–599, https://doi.org/10.1017/
gov.2013.30.
4 Karen Sanders, Molina Hurtado, Maria Jesus, Jessica Zoragastua “Populism and Exclu-
sionary Narratives: The ‘Other’ in Podemos’ 2014 European Union Election Campaign”,
European Journal of Communication, 32:6, 2017, pp. 552–567, https://doi.org/10.
1177/0267323117737952.
5 Sergiu Gherghina, Sergiu, Sergiu Micoiu, Sorina Soare, Contemporary Populism a
Controversial Concept and Its Diverse Forms, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2013.
6 Chris Gifford, “The People Against Europe: The Eurosceptic Challenge to the United
Kingdom’s Coalition Government”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52:3,
2014, pp. 512–528.
Euroscepticism and populism into a working definition that can be oper-

ationalized. The popular sovereignty aspect would equate “the people”
with “the nation” in terms of appeals to sovereignty, while attempting to
delegitimize the EU as a body for enacting policy, stressing the costs of
political union over any benefits. The anti-establishment element would
highlight the remote nature of the EU in the majority of people’s lives,
the imposition of “foreign” rules and laws, and would seek to align with
“the will of the people” against out of touch “Brussels elites.” Finally, the
exclusionary aspect of populism would be fulfilled through playing on
the public’s ill-ease over immigration, offering simplified, emotive ratio-
nales to exacerbate anti-immigrant feeling, and a divide between “the
people” as a homogeneous entity, i.e., British, and those who threaten
the homogeneity, i.e., European and non-European migrants.
The Pathological Normalcy

of Populist Euroscepticism
The hegemony of Euroscepticism in the UK has depended on the ideo-
logical construction of British exceptionalism in relation to European
integration. Both before and after membership of the European Commu-
nity, discourses of national differentiation, centered on the idea of a
different kind of economy and a different kind of people, have been
fundamental to the expression of Euroscepticism in the UK. Here we
discuss, respectively, the construction of Britain as different, as a political
economy and as a national community.
While the economic case for UK membership has always seemed water-
tight, it has not been without tensions that Eurosceptics have exploited.
Much of the resistance to membership on the left of British politics in the
1960s and 1970s concerned the impact of opening up the UK economy
to European competitive pressures and the implications for longstanding
commitments to the Commonwealth. Conversely, by the end of the
1980s it was the right that viewed the Community as an economic threat.
Thatcherite Eurosceptics viewed the Delorsian vision of Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU), as the imposition of a continent-wide socially
regulated model of capitalism. These sentiments have been consistently
echoed by Eurosceptics, perpetuating the idea that the EU is an economic
threat, out of step with the original ethos of the single market. While the
idea of the EU as a bastion of socialism may be discredited, the differ-
entiation discourse has influenced British governments’ attitudes to the
European political economy. While initially supportive of Euro member-

ship, New Labour under Gordon Brown’s Chancellorship (1997–2007)
became increasingly critical of EMU, trumpeting the British financially
driven model as a more effective way of managing global capitalism. By
the time the Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition came to power
in 2010, the Eurozone crisis was in full swing and the government
looked to distance itself from its implications, particularly in terms of any
financial contributions to bailouts. Meanwhile, Eurosceptics delighted in
their belief that their predictions on EMU had been proven correct. For
them, the EU was engaged in a dangerous political economic experiment
divorced from its free-market origin, and from which Britain must keep
its distance.
During the referendum campaign, economic arguments for exit sharp-
ened, coalescing around the freedom of the UK to negotiate bilateral free
trade agreements outside of the EU, thus exploiting new global opportu-
nities. For many advocates of a leave vote, the EU was viewed as divided
and in decline, placing the UK in a powerful bargaining position when
it came to exit negotiations. The Leave campaigns presented a positive
economic future for the UK outside of the EU, challenging the lurid
scenarios of recession and decline presented by Remain. Moreover, this
economic vision aligned with its populist politics, as it meant reasserting
independent sovereign power; by voting to leave the EU “the people”
would have “taken back control” of their economic destiny.
The Leave campaigns drew upon a rich tradition of anti-Europeanism
that has symbolically constructed “Europe” as the antithesis of British
political identities and institutions. What has been central to this domi-
nant form of British Euroscepticism is the idea that the British are a
different kind of people, and hold values that are not compatible with
European integration. The belief in an organic national community and
an exceptional national identity is a discourse found not only on the
extremes of British politics but at the core of the British political tradi-
tion. In his Bloomberg speech on Britain and Europe, David Cameron
proved to be one of is most eloquent exponents:
We have the character of an island nation - independent, forthright,

passionate in defence of our sovereignty.7
In many respects, Cameron’s speech highlighted the ambiguous commit-

ment to the European Union typical of British governing elites, with its
emphasis on the instrumental, “means to an end” reasons for member-
ship.
The hegemony of British Euroscepticism has depended upon the
extent to which this discourse of British exceptionalism has been consis-
tently perpetuated outside of parliament. It includes the large number
of extra-parliamentary political groupings, some of which have been
established for some time such as “Get Britain Out” (formerly the
Anti-Common Market League), indicative of the long history of British
Eurosceptic mobilization. Eurosceptic think tanks such as the Bruges
Group have proved particularly influential on the Conservative party.
Over the years a number of groups have been specifically formed to
campaign for referenda on treaties and membership (e.g., The People’s
Pledge, The People’s Vote), or to resist particular policy develop-
ments such as the Euro (e.g., Business for Sterling). From a compar-
ative perspective, Britain stands out in terms of the sheer number of
Eurosceptic groups and campaigns that have emerged since membership
was first muted in the 1960s.8
What has also been a characteristic of the British context has been the
dominance of Euroscepticism within the right-wing press, notably those
from the Murdoch stable but also The Daily Mail and The Daily Express.
In these publications, the representation of the EU is organized around
separation and threat in which “nations are organic political commu-
nities” and “the EU goes against the natural political order.9 ” During
the referendum, the press was heavily skewed in favor of Brexit with the
majority of the popular press running pro-leave articles and accounting for
7 David Cameron, “Speech on Plans for a Referendum on British Membership of the

EU”, The Guardian, 23 January, 2013, https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/
23/david-cameron-eu-speech-referendum.
8 John FitzGibbon, “Extra-Parliamentary Eurosceptic Actors in the UK”, in K. Tournier-
Sol, C. Gifford (eds.), The UK Challenge to Europeanization, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015,
pp. 172–188.
9 Benjamin Hawkins, “Nation, Separation and Threat: An Analysis of British Media
Discourses on the European Union Treaty Reform Process”, JCMS: Journal of Common
Market Studies, 50:4, 2012, pp. 561–577.
80% of circulation.10 What was notable was the sensationalist reporting

characterized by misinformation and opinion over any attempt to educate
and inform people. This was particularly the case over immigration in
which unfettered free movement was presented as overwhelming British
public services. Driving this was the growing dominance and indepen-
dence of the media in the UK over how politics was represented. An
intensely competitive environment gave rise to media that adopted “anti-
politics” in their reporting, focusing on political failure and scandal in a
bid to attract readers and viewers. Notably, exacerbated once mainstream
media had to compete with uncensored and unregulated social media. As
Mudde11 noted the rise of populism has gone hand in hand with changes
in the modern media, with the likes of Nigel Farage exploiting a media
context that was at the same time highly receptive to his anti-elitism.
In sum, Euroscepticism has been a persistent feature of British poli-
tics that has a long history.12 Moreover, at times its articulation has
been vigorously populist.13 Nevertheless, it was the success of the United
Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) that took this to a new level. Its
particular brand of populist Euroscepticism formed the basis of a more
fully fledged radical right challenge to the political mainstream.14 Signifi-
cantly, UKIP began to threaten the Conservatives’ position as the de facto
right-wing political party on the UK political landscape.15 Cameron’s
decision to call a referendum on EU membership was in part motivated
by the rise of UKIP, who he described to Nick Clegg in 2012, the Deputy
10 David Levy, Billur Aslan, Diego Bironzo, “The Press and the Referendum
Campaign”, in Daniel Jackson, Ei ar Thorsen, Dominic Wring (eds.), EU Referendum
Analysis 2016: Media, Voters, Campaign, Bournemouth: The Centre for the Study of
Journalism, Culture and Community, 2016, p. 33.
pp. 553–444.
12 Karine Tournier-Sol, Chris Gifford, The UK Challenge to Europeanization: the
Persistence of British Euroscepticism, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
13 Chris Gifford, “The Rise of Post-Imperial Populism: The Case of Right-Wing
Euroscepticism in Britain”, European Journal of Political Research, 45:5, 2006, pp. 851–
869.
14 Karine Tournier-Sol, “The UKIP Challenge”, in K. Tournier-Sol, C. Gifford (eds.),
The UK Challenge to Europeanization, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 134–147.
15 Paul Webb, Tim Bale, “Why Do Tories Defect to UKIP? Conservative Party Members
and the Temptations of the Populist Radical Right”, Political Studies, 62: 4, 2014,
pp. 961–970.
Prime Minister, as “breathing down my neck.16 ” In 2014 UKIP went on

to win the largest percentage (24%) of the national vote in the Euro-
pean elections pushing the Conservatives into third place. It represented
a significant shift in tone around the EU that was proving to be electorally
successful and held considerable appeal for Eurosceptic Conservatives.17
The politicization of European free movement was central to this success
and led Cameron to commit to its curtailment in his renegotiations of the
UK’s relationship to the EU that preceded the referendum. His perceived
failure to win anything other than minor concessions on this issue meant
immigration remained highly salient in the referendum campaign.
In the hands of Farage et al., Eurosceptic populism took on a distinctly
radical right-wing nativist turn, as the “othering” of migrants and minori-
ties was ideologically aligned with the emphasis on “the people” and
anti-elitism. The dominant form of Euroscepticism by the time of the
referendum; it was a brand capable of appealing to a certain kind of
voter disillusioned with mainstream party politics.18 Reading this political
mood, leading Conservatives such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson
pivoted in a populist direction and positioned themselves for Leave in the
referendum campaign. While Farage may have been held at a distance by
leading Conservatives there was an ideological convergence on the right
of UK politics that attested to the pathological normalcy of radical right
populism:
The key features of the populist radical right ideology – nativism, authori-
tarianism, and populism – are not unrelated to mainstream ideologies and
mass attitudes. In fact, they are best seen as a radicalisation of main-
stream values. Hence, the populist radical right should be considered a
pathological normalcy, not a normal pathology.19
16 Martin Kettle, “The Downfall of David Cameron: A European Tragedy”, The

Guardian, 24 June 2016.
17 Webb, Paul, Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, “‘All Mouth and No Trousers?’ How
Many Conservative Party Members Voted for UKIP in 2015—and Why Did They Do
so?”, Politics, 37:4, 2017, pp. 432–444, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717697344.
18 This is not to say that there had not been a left-wing case for leaving the EU,
prominent left figures such as Dennis Skinner or Jeremy Corbyn (prior to his leadership
of the Labour Party) have long held scepticism about the EU and a number of Labour
politicians came out for Leave.
19 Mudde, “Populism”, p. 1181.
A radical right populism underpinned an emerging Leave coalition

that united the mainstream and extreme right in the UK during the
referendum, the two leave campaigns notwithstanding. Early on it was
clear that the advantages normally associated with being the “status quo”
governing position in a referendum, were successfully challenged and
transformed into advantages by populist Leave opponents. Remain lost
control of the economic arguments that emphasized the damaging impact
of Brexit on the economy when it was successfully reframed by the Leave
campaign as cynical scare-mongering by “the establishment” to frighten
people voting for the status quo.20 A populist rhetoric constructed figures
of national and international authority as self-interested and dishonest
elites, who lacked faith in an independent Britain. A populist vision of
reclaiming an essential and organic political community from the EU
underpinned the Leave campaign. This was highlighted by the dominance
of immigration during the campaign and its relentlessly negative framing
by the pro-Brexit press. Consequently, the issue was strongly linked to
sovereignty and the most powerful slogan of the campaign, Leave’s “take
back control,” was often discussed in relation to borders. The campaign
therefore saw the extension of a powerful, preexisting Euroscepticism
into a broad-based radical right populism, which reduced the debate on
membership to a set of fundamental oppositions of “us-versus-them, pro-
Establishment versus anti-Establishment, pro-immigration versus anti-
immigration, nationalist versus internationalist.” This was played out in
the online media world, in the framing of news through editorials, leader
columns, and front-page choices indicative of how the rise of populism
has been intertwined with the mediatization of politics.
20 Martin Martin, Gordon Ramsay, UK Media Coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum

Campaign, London: Centre for the study of Media, Communication and Power, Kings
College, 2017.
Mediatization and Boris Johnson

Mediatization is largely considered a process-driven development21,22 in
how the media can influence politics. The media and politics become
intertwined, with the media exerting a greater influence over how poli-
tics operates as an institution. Adaptation to media logics23 by politicians’
shapes their communication and policy strategies, in order to fit within the
frameworks of acceptability to media organizations. Specifically, the medi-
atization of politics results in increased conversational and personalized
media reporting and presentation from politicians, who are constantly
interacting with media-based political commentators.24 Increasing adap-
tation to media values can have positive consequences for populist
politicians, with those political communicators who are able to manage
their image and message in media-savvy ways increasing their chances
of being considered “newsworthy.25 ” Mediatization represents a theoret-
ical underpinning for understanding the way in which Johnson’s speech
worked as part of the “new” way of “doing” politics. Johnson arguably
represents a physical embodiment of mediatization, especially when his
background is considered. Johnson was the most high-profile politician
on the leave side who would go on to become Prime Minister in 2019 and
who had for some time established himself as a charismatic and media-
friendly presence on the national political stage, most notably as Mayor
of London. Prior to political office, Johnson worked as a journalist, for
some of the more well-known organizations in Europe; The Times, Daily
21 Kent Asp, “Mediatization: Rethinking the Question of Media Power,” in Knut

Lundby (ed.), Mediatization of Communication, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc,
2014, pp. 349–374, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hud/reader.action?docID=
1778479&ppg=363.
22 Jesper Strömbäck, “Four Phases of Mediatization: An Analysis of the Mediatization of
Politics”, The International Journal of Press/Politics, 13:3, 2008, pp. 228–246, https://
doi.org/10.1177/1940161208319097.
23 David Altheide, Robert Snow Media Logic, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979.
24 Stig Hjarvard, “Mediatization of Society”, Nordicom Review, 29:2, 2008, pp. 102–
131, https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0181.
25 Gianpietro Mazzoleni, “Mediatization and Political Populism”, in Frank Esser, Jesper
Strömbäck (eds.), Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western
Democracies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 2014, pp. 42–56.
Telegraph, and The Spectator.26 It is in this capacity, where Johnson first

established himself as a vocal critic of the European Union, working as
Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. As a journalist, Johnson
was regularly accused of “bending” the truth. This history of fabrication;
twisting and falsifying to fit the overall narrative of the story being told,
arguably gave Johnson a particular ability to shape a media-friendly polit-
ical argument. The subsequent analysis of the speech shows that Johnson
is indeed skilled at capturing the issue, reframing and promoting the
subject in a way which was profoundly important in the victory of leave
and signaled the collapse of the “status quo” governing position toward
the EU that Cameron and others attempted to defend.
Eurosceptic Populist Framing

In order to examine exactly how populist Euroscepticism operates in the
public discourse we here provide an analysis of the first major speech on
the topic of leaving the EU, given by Boris Johnson in London on 9
May 2016 in the midst of the referendum campaign. It was delivered at
the Vote Leave headquarters, roughly halfway through the Referendum
campaign.27 The speech should be viewed as a critical intervention that
contributed to the populist reframing of the UK’s membership of the EU
by a key section of the British political class. Moreover, such speeches
were significant media interventions that sought to restructure the public
discourse in a populist direction. Following content analysis of Boris
Johnson’s speech, we demonstrate that multiple populist frames were
indeed on display within the speech and informed the media reaction.
This points to a Eurosceptic populist framing by elites in relation to the
EU debate, and works to further understand how the EU referendum of
2016 was shaped by key political actors and the media in the UK. This
“populist turn” from a senior member of the Conservative Party was to
26 Karla Adam, William Booth, “Former Colleagues of Boris Johnson as a

Journalist Warn he is not ‘Fit for National Office’”, Independent, 21 July
2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-telegraph-times-
journalist-thatcher-tory-leadership-churchill-a9014196.html.
27 Vote Leave, 2016, Key Speeches, Interviews and Op-eds, Retrieved from https://www.
voteleavetakecontrol.org/key_speeches_interviews_and_op_eds.html, accessed 7 January
2020.
set the tone for the resulting fall-out from the Referendum onwards, to
Johnson’s eventual premiership in 2019.
Firstly though, it is important to explain what is meant by a “frame,”
especially in its application to Johnson’s speech. Entman,28 argues that
there are several elements which can constitute a frame. Firstly, a frame
requires a problem definition, which in this case can be the EU, as a
supranational governing body. Similarly, this can then be further defined
within populist rhetoric (e.g., anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, or exclu-
sionary lines). Second, a causal interpretation of the issue or problem is
given by those employing the frame; again, this is done with regard to
the EU project. With reference to Eurosceptic populism, this can manifest
in multiple forms. A pro-popular sovereignty frame may characterize the
EU problem as threatening sovereignty through; centralization of govern-
ment, a loss of independence, or through highlighting perceived undemo-
cratic characteristics of the EU. An anti-elitist frame may characterize the
EU in terms of control, or social engineering, while exclusionary frames
may raise concerns over forced integration and immigration impacting the
nation-state.
A third element of a frame, as defined by Entman, contains a moral
evaluation of the problem. In the case of Eurosceptic populism, this may
constitute an appeal to “traditional British values” in opposition to alien
“EU values,” whereby it is morally wrong to accept the imposition of
such alien cultural and political modes of living. Finally, the frame aims
to provide a treatment for the issue or problem. In terms of Johnson’s
speech this relates to the case to leave the EU in the upcoming refer-
endum. Thus, all aspects of the frame are present in the speech, and to a
certain extent these are reflected in the media reaction to the speech.
As all three elements of Eurosceptic populist framing were found in
the speech, each will be discussed individually, before a final assessment
of them together can be made.
Anti-Elitism
By and large, the most common element of populist framing in the
speech gave reference to some form of anti-elitism. This in itself is inter-
esting, as Boris Johnson can easily be described as a member of the elite
28 Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm”,

Journal of Communication, 43:4, 1993, pp. 51–58.
himself, though positioning themselves as non-elite is a key characteristic

of populist leaders.29 Therefore, it begs the question, “where is the line
drawn?”, does Johnson regard the elites as being those who possess even
greater political power than himself, or does he include himself and others
in his analysis of who is to blame for society’s ills? Indeed, this question-
able positioning is used by Johnson at the beginning of his speech; taking
a key focal point of populist antagonism and twisting it to be a beneficial
aspect of his own position on the EU;
He said that I had no right to vote Leave, because I was in fact a “liberal
cosmopolitan”.
I want this morning to explain why the campaign to Leave the EU is
attracting other liberal spirits and people I admire.
Thus, in taking the moniker of a “liberal cosmopolitan,” an insult in

populist terms, Johnson can reposition himself as a representative of
common-sense critique against the EU, while delegitimizing further
criticism of his own position of power and wealth.
This sets the stage for further anti-elitist framing of the arguments
against the EU. These can be organized around certain themes, all of
which add up to an anti-elitist populism, filled with Euroscepticism. One
such theme is that of control;
Brussels now has exclusive or explicit competence for trade, customs,

competition,…and new powers over culture, tourism, education and youth.
The EU already has considerable powers to set rates of indirect taxation
across the whole 28-nation territory, and of course it has total control of
monetary policy for all 19 in the eurozone.
No one has any proper control – which is why EU spending is
persistently associated with fraud.
As can be seen from the above quotes, the EU or Brussels is characterized

as an all-encompassing powerhouse of control. The theme of control, or
lack of it, feeds into commonly held criticisms of the EU by Eurosceptics;
over-reaching powers, a lack of independence of the nation, and unbridled
corruption (i.e., fraud). In this respect, the EU is an alien organization
29 Cas Mudde, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, New
York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
trying to engineer people into a common European identity that they

don’t want:
The British share with other EU populations a growing sense of alienation,

which is one of the reasons turn-out at European elections continues to
decline.
As Jean-Claude Juncker has himself remarked with disapproval, “too
many Europeans are returning to a national or regional mindset”.
There is simply no common political culture in Europe.
Instead of going with the grain of human nature and public opinion,
they are reaching for the same corrective…more legislation, more federal
control; and whenever there is a crisis of any kind the cry is always the
same. “More Europe, more Europe!”.
This apparent distaste for nationhood and regionalism in the face of an

increasing Europe is leveled at those characterized as EU elites, using
increased legislation and federalization to override the desires of citizens
of the UK and elsewhere. This feeds into ideas around social experi-
mentation and Social Darwinism; conspiracy-like projects, whereby the
ruling classes of the EU aim to create a superstate of Europe, removing
all defining characteristics of what once made the individual members
nations, replacing them as states within the EU;
It was an exercise in what I believe used to be called behavioural therapy;

inducing a change in the underlying attitudes by forcing a change in
behaviour. Their inspired idea was to weave a cat’s cradle of supranational
legislation that would not only bind the former combatants together, but
create a new sensation of European-ness.
In the face of that disillusionment, the European elites are doing exactly
the wrong thing. instead of devolving power, they are centralizing.
A final element of Johnson’s attack on the EU elites concerns itself with

trust and the ability of UK politicians to live up to promises made to the
electorate. Largely, this centers on the inability of politicians to effectively
deliver on election promises that may fall foul of over-riding EU legisla-
tion or practices. Johnson argues that the inability to control borders, do
trade outside the EU, and even control law and order issues has resulted
in damage being done to the UK democracy, citing a lack of trust in
politicians as symptomatic in a greater breakdown in democratic account-
ability, due to the supranational status of the EU and its apparent ability
to override national governments. Thus, the undemocratic nature of the

EU is not just an issue for popular and national sovereignty, it is also an
issue of EU elites versus national interests;
I think it bewilders people to be told that this most basic power of a state
– to decide who has the right to live and work in your country – has been
taken away and now resides in Brussels.
It is very worrying that the European Court of Justice – Luxembourg,
not Strasbourg – should now be freely adjudicating on human rights ques-
tions, and whether or not this country has the right to deport people the
Home Office believes are a threat to our security;
Popular Sovereignty
A further element of Johnson’s populist framing of the EU debate rests
around the issue of sovereignty. In particular, the allusions to popular
sovereignty are often mixed with national sovereignty. The nation is the
people, and the people are the nation. The EU represents a curtailing
of sovereignty, through a loss of independence as a nation, a loss of
democratic accountability, and the rise of a centralized EU superstate.
Characterizing himself as a defender of democratic freedom, Johnson
is keen to stress various “undemocratic” aspects of the EU, in terms of
policy creation and citizen’s rights. In both, the UK is seen as losing out
to the whims of the EU and the Eurozone. Indeed, Johnson paints the
UK as some kind of “whipping boy” of Europe, consistently having its
wishes and goals as a country usurped by the powerful EU;
It is this fundamental democratic problem – this erosion of democracy

– that brings me into this fight.
Look at that list of Lisbon competences – with 45 new fields of policy
where Britain can be outvoted by a qualified majority…the EU is now
generating 60 per cent of the laws passing through parliament.
We have proved to ourselves time and again that we cannot change
the direction. we cannot change the pace. we cannot interrupt the steady
erosion of democracy.
Powerlessness appears to be a key theme of Johnson’s speech, character-

izing the UK as having lost all power as a nation to decide its own fate,
while the EU is painted as an increasingly powerful organization, with
a clear direction that it will achieve at any cost; “the United States of
Europe.” The onus is on the UK to take a stand against further loss of

power, and to regain its sense of purpose as an independent nation:
The answer to the problems of Europe today is not “more Europe”, if

that means more forcible economic and political integration. The answer
is reform, and devolution of powers back to nations and people.
It is we who are speaking up for the people, and it is they who are
defending an obscurantist and universalist system of government that is
now well past its sell by date and which is ever more remote from ordinary
voters.
It is a choice between getting dragged ever further into a federal
superstate, or taking a stand now.
This plays into the mythology held around the UK’s role in the world,
having once been the superpower, it finds itself as a decreasingly impor-
tant player on the world stage.30 The role of the UK or Britain on
the world stage particularly plays into identity formation for a particular
subset of British voters, particularly those who appear to favor leaving the
EU.31
Exclusionary
The exclusionary element of Johnson’s speech is undoubtedly more
discreet than the other populist elements on display. There is a distinct
lack of overt xenophobia and racism, which is to be expected from an
established politician in government. Not that Johnson is averse to using
racial language or stereotyping (for a comprehensive list, see Baynes32 ).
Instead, Johnson pursues a more respectable angle to the anti-immigrant
stance, appearing to use common-sense arguments against the EU’s
freedom of movement rules. Subtle “dog-whistles” around the compe-
tition for public services and the NHS are key drivers of the exclusionary
content in the speech. While there are some outright racial stereotypes
30 Linda Colley, “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument”, The Journal of British

Studies, 31:4, 1992, 309–329.
31 Andrew Gardner, “Brexit, Boundaries and Imperial Identities: A Comparative
View”, Journal of Social Archaeology 17:1, 2017, pp. 3–26.
32 Chris Baynes, “Boris Johnson: Tory Leadership Frontrunner’s History of Racist
Comments, from Muslim ‘Letter Boxes’ to African ‘Piccaninnies’”, The Independent, 24
May 2019.
employed; “Italian Mafia” as an example, these are of the sort that can
be playfully written off as “Boris being Boris,” almost to be expected
from the blustering and bumbling character the public is acquainted
with. However, this can also be a key aspect of a populist actor’s media-
tized persona, being unafraid to speak “sense,” where other establishment
figures shy away from it, and engaging in stereotypes that the public can
recognize. In particular, this is often found in debates around immigra-
tion, we can see Johnson echoing the rhetoric of Nigel Farage33 on the
usefulness of certain immigrants to the UK and the competition between
British citizens and immigrants coming from Europe;
I believe that they want an Australian-style immigration policy that allocates

work permits to those our economy needs, that says no to those whose
skills we do not need, and that gives an emphatic denial of entry to those
we have any suspicion want to do us harm.
The play on immigration concerns among the electorate appears to have

been a defining feature of the Referendum campaign and result, with
Leave voters largely holding negative views of inward immigration and
laying the blame at the EU’s door.34 Similarly, the importance of British-
ness and British identity were also commonly held factors in voting to
leave the EU. These are all elements that Johnson plays on in his speech
around the problems brought on by the UK’s continued membership of
the EU;
Europe faces twin crises of mass migration, and a euro that has proved a
disaster for some member states.
deciding who we want to come here to live and work – or letting the
EU decide.
we add a population the size of Newcastle every year, with all the extra
and unfunded pressure that puts on the NHS and other public services.
we push away brilliant students from Commonwealth countries, who
want to pay to come to our universities; we find ourselves hard pressed to
33 Nigel Farage, “Nigel Farage: Immigration Will Be the Defining Issue of This EU
Referendum Campaign”, The Telegraph, 21 August 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.
uk/news/uknews/imsssssmigration/11817508/Nigel-Farage-Immigration-will-be-the-def
ining-issue-of-this-EU-referendum-campaign.html.
34 John Curtice, “Why Leave Won the UKs EU Referendum”, JCMS: Journal of
Common Market Studies, 55, 2017, pp. 19–37, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12613.
recruit people who might work in our NHS, as opposed to make use of
its services.
Again, powerlessness and a distinction between the UK and the EU are

clearly on display here, key themes running through the speech. The
ability to make decisions for the benefit of the country is again charac-
terized as being wrested from the UK’s hands and taken into the EU’s
long list of powers. Indeed, the overall aspect of the speech returns to
these key elements, whether around the anti-elitist sentiment, the wishes
for popular sovereignty, and finally in the exclusionary aspect, the “crisis”
Johnson is rallying against is the downward spiral of the UK’s perceived
role in the world. Competing cultures, both political and social, are seen
as distinct national characteristics which must be upheld here in the UK,
in opposition to being swallowed up by the alien culture of the EU.
It is these underlying arguments that drive the Eurosceptic populism
of Johnson’s anti-EU speech. By positioning himself at the head of the
Leave campaign, Johnson could articulate the exceptional nature of the
UK, in economic, political, and cultural terms, while identifying common
enemies that the people can rally together against; the EU as a polit-
ical entity, and the cultural threat posed by immigration and increased
“Europeanisation.”
Conclusion
The relationship between the UK and European integration has been
framed in terms of difference and exceptionalism whether in terms of
economic interests or more fundamental understandings of political iden-
tity. Euroscepticism has been the default position of UK elites and
institutions since before membership. Moreover, a populist “othering”
of the European Union and its predecessors has been a discursive strategy
characteristic of those in the mainstream as well as fringes of British poli-
tics. It found a powerful ally in the British right-wing press, notably
the tabloids. In this respect, “Europe” found its niche as part of the
‘folk devils’ of British public life alongside the German football team,
asylum seekers, and pedophiles. Those politicians who embraced populist
Euroscepticism, such as Johnson and Gove who were former journal-
ists, embraced the mediatization of politics in which “performing for the
camera, manipulating the frame, and controlling the audience experience”
was the contemporary form of doing politics in the internet age.35 It was
the success of media performances of populist Euroscepticism by char-
acters such as Johnson and Farage that enabled the transformation of
British Euroscepticism into a full-fledged radical right populism. In the
context of the populist turn, Johnson’s campaign speech analyzed in this
chapter should be understood as part of this profound reshaping of British
politics. A Leave cleavage was constituted during the referendum by the
appeal to a diversity of fears and resentments and moulded into a majority,
framed as “the people” in opposition to the interconnected threats from
immigrants, the EU, and elites. Albeit with less enthusiasm on the part of
the electorate, it was reenacted in the general election of December 2019
and confirmed the Conservatives move from a mainstream to a radical
right party (See chapter by Tournier-Sol in this volume).
35 Will Davies, “How Boris Johnson and Brexit Are Berlusconifying Britain”, The
Guardian, 4 December 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/
04/boris-johnson-brexit-britain-politics-media-business.
CHAPTER 3
The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular

Grievances
Emma Bell
Populism is everywhere: in states across the globe; on the political left

and the right. Yet, in the UK the term has typically been applied to
minority parties like UKIP and leaders such as Nigel Farage.1 Only more
rarely is it associated with the political mainstream. If the Labour Party is
currently regarded as taking a populist direction under Jeremy Corbyn’s
leadership, this is because Corbyn is labeled as an “extremist”. “Moder-
ate” parties, with few exceptions, are generally seen to be immune to the
“populist contagion” (although, for some academics, the term may also
1 See, for example, Karine Tournier-Sol, Prendre le large: Le UKIP et le choix du Brexit,
Paris: Vendémiaire, 2019.
E. Bell (B)
Contemporary British Politics, LLSETI Université Savoie Mont-Blanc,
Chambery, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_3
44 E. BELL
be applied to the mainstream2 ). The label of populism is more commonly

used by mainstream parties to denigrate their opponents and cast doubt
upon the viability of their policies: it is intended as a slur. Theresa May
certainly used the term in this way in a speech to fellow conservatives in
2018 when she declared that “Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are
exploiting populist policies” and vowed to do all in her power to fight
socialism.3 May was merely echoing the British press which has described
Corbyn as someone who “has always been a populist”4 ; labelled him
“the torchbearer of British populism”5 ; and accused him of threatening
democracy by applying “populism in its purest form”.6 Yet, even Labour
Party strategists have reportedly appropriated the term in an attempt to
boost Corbyn’s anti establishment credentials.7
This chapter seeks first to determine whether populism may be accu-
rately applied to Jeremy Corbyn and his policies. This is no easy task
since, as almost all those who write about populism note, the term is
extraordinarily difficult to define. For Cas Mudde, it lacks the “intellec-
tual refinement and consistency” of most ideologies—it is therefore only a
“thin-centred ideology” which means that it can easily be combined with
many different ideologies.8 Jan-Werner Müller has noted that populism
may only lead to “conceptual chaos” since “almost anything – left, right,
democratic, antidemocratic, liberal, illiberal – can be called populist, and
populism can be viewed as both friend and foe of democracy.”9 As such,
perhaps it is not helpful to describe it as an ideology at all—thin or
2 See, for example, Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition
39:4, 2004, pp. 541–563, 551.
3 Theresa May, “Speech to the Annual Conservative Black and White Tie Ball”,
February, 2018.
4 Bagehot, “British Politics is Being Profoundly Reshaped by Populism,” The Economist,
16 November 2017.
5 Freddie Gray, “Corbyn Copy: Why Jeremy and Trump are (almost) the Same”, The
Spectator, 17 June 2017.
6 Julian Baggini, “Jeremy Corbyn is a Great Populist. But That’s no Good for our
Democracy”, 25 July, 2016.
7 Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot, “Labour Plans Jeremy Corbyn Relaunch to Ride
Anti-Establishment Wave”, The Guardian, 15 December, 2016.
8 Cas Mudde, 2004, op.cit., 544.
9 Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2016, p. 10.
3 THE POPULIST SLUR: DELEGITIMISING POPULAR GRIEVANCES 45
thick. Indeed, for Laclau, it is rather a political logic, “a performative act

endowed with a rationality of its own,”10 the aim of which is to articulate
different social demands.11 This, he affirms, is simply politics in action. All
politicians are in fact populists to the extent that they seek to favor one
set of social demands against another, regardless of their ideological pedi-
gree. As Judis notes, “there is no set of features that exclusively defines
movements, parties, and people that are called populist.”12 Certainly, all
politicians adopt strategies that may be regarded as “populist,” notably
appealing to “the people” against an enemy.13 They may oppose the
“pure people” against “the corrupt elite”14 or pit “the people” against
other loosely defined groups such as “migrants.”15 Laclau is therefore
right, I think, to state that the real question to ask is not whether a
movement is populist or not but to ask instead “to what extent is a move-
ment populist?”.16 This does not, however, mean, as Gerbaudo worries,
that we should focus only on style.17 Indeed, in order to determine to
what extent Corbyn is populist, it is necessary to measure his style and
his policies against political strategies commonly described as populist,
most notably that of creating an antagonistic division between the ruling
elites and ordinary people. An analysis of content is equally as important
as form. This chapter therefore understands populism, not as a form of
deviant politics which departs from the political norm, as the term is often
popularly understood, but rather, following Laclau, as something that is
inherent to the very practice of politics. It is not so much an ideology—be
it thick or thin—but rather a way of doing politics.
The final part of this chapter suggests that populism, as a ubiquitous,
polysemantic concept, is not necessarily a useful one in terms of advancing
10 Ernesto Laclau, op.cit., 18.

11 Ibid., p. 117.
12 John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American
and European politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016, p. 13.
13 Ernesto Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name?”, in Francisco Panizza (ed.), Populism
and the Mirror of Democracy, London: Verso, 2005a, pp. 32–49, 45.
14 Cas Mudde, 2004, op. cit.
15 Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007, 69.
16 Ernesto Laclau, op. cit., 45, my emphasis.
17 Paulo Gerbaudo, “The Populist Era,” Soundings, 65, 2017, pp. 46–58, 48.
46 E. BELL
our understanding of contemporary political trends. It suggests that its

indiscriminate use may even be dangerous, particularly to the extent
that it fails to take legitimate popular grievances seriously, thus fuelling
disaffection with the political system and ultimately posing a danger to
democracy itself.
Corbyn: Populist or Democrat?

Appealing to “The Many”
One of the key features of populist politics that is highlighted by all
researchers without exception is its appeal to the “people.” Of course,
this is a feature of politics in liberal democracies in general, but populist
politics are often seen to be characterized by a particularly narrow view
of who exactly “the people” are as well as by a strong critique of repre-
sentative democracy. Corbyn certainly appeals directly to the people and
claims that his policies will work in the interests of “the many, not the
few.” But who exactly are “the many” for Corbyn?
It would seem they include all those whose interests have not been
defended by the neoliberal consensus politics of the past three decades.
Corbyn has referred, for example, to “local people” and tenants whose
best interests are not served by “private developers”; to the members of
the public who have been “ripped off” by private sector utility opera-
tors18 ; to the young people who will have “to pay more to get less in
education, in health, in housing, in pensions and everything else.”19 He
also invoked the victims of the Grenfell tower disaster to demonstrate
how ordinary people have been failed by a system that puts profit before
people, quoting the warning made by the tower’s tenants’ group before
the disaster which presciently declared, “only a catastrophic event will
expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.”20 In doing
so, he credited the people with superior knowledge to that of the elites.
He also conferred upon them a certain dignity, something he does on
a weekly basis, allowing their voice to be heard in parliament via Prime
Ministers Questions (he habitually reads out questions sent in to him by
18 Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech to the Labour Party Conference”, Brighton, 27 September

2017a.
19 Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech at the Glastonbury Festival”, 24 June 2017b.
20 Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
ordinary people during his grilling of the Prime Minister in the House of
Commons). Both these strategies are often identified as highly populist,21
as is the idea that “only some of the people are really the people.”22
Indeed, Corbyn’s discourse necessarily excludes from “the many” those
who do not share his criticism of neoliberal policies.
However, Corbyn adopts amuch broader vision of “the many” than
most populists. It cannot be said that he appeals exclusively to what
Taggart describes as “the heartland.”23 The heartland, in which “the
people” are presumed to reside, is characterized as backward-looking—
“an attempt to construct what has been lost by the present”—as homoge-
nous and inward-looking.24 Corbyn may hark back to the old spirit of
the Labour Party in his determination to fight for social justice, but
his vision of Britain and “the many” who make up its population is
not backward-looking or exclusive. He articulates a thoroughly modern,
forward-looking view of Britain when he speaks developing a “new poli-
tics” capable of uniting people of all ages and backgrounds that refuses
“to pander to scapegoating or racism.”25 Solidarity is a key theme running
through Corbyn’s discourse, involving solidarity not just with fellow citi-
zens but also with migrants and people across the world blighted by
the contemporary problems of war or climate change.26 This outlook is
marked by its internationalism, not the narrow nationalism usually asso-
ciated with right-wing populism. Far from dividing the people, Corbyn’s
vision aims to unite and, it seems, is quite successful in practice. As Pren-
toulis argues, “Jeremy Corbyn is becoming the signifier under which
diverse groups of people – from liberal, cosmopolitan big-city commu-
nities to traditional northern heartland Labour constituencies – are able
to express their grievances.”27 This affirmation is borne out by electoral
21 For example, Francisco Panizza, “Introduction”, in Francisco Panizza (ed.), Populism

and the Mirror of Democracy, London: Verso, 2005, pp. 1–31, 26.
22 Jan-Werner Müller, op.cit., 21.
23 Paul Taggart, Populism, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.
24 Ibid., 95–96.
25 Jeremy Corbyn, op.cit., 2017a.
26 Ibid.
27 Marina Prentoulis, “Lessons from Syriza”, in Mark Perryman (ed.), The Corbyn Effect,
Chadwell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017, pp. 190–201, 193.
48 E. BELL
analysis which suggests that support for Labour in the 2017 general elec-
tion cut across traditional boundaries of geography and class.28 Indeed,
the party increased its vote share among all social classes, but especially
among social class groups AB and C1.29 The party also increased its share
of the vote relatively evenly across all English regions, although its vote
share was highest in the north-east and continued to be relatively low in
Scotland.30
Corbyn’s appeal to “the people” may therefore be regarded as inclu-
sionary, rather than exclusionary. Yet, according to Mudde and Kalt-
wasser, this does not mean that such discourse is not populist—it may
be regarded as an inclusionary form of populism, focussed on mate-
rial, political, and symbolic inclusion, even if they see this as being
more common in Latin America than in Europe.31 Symbolic inclusion
is evident in Corbyn’s discourse, as we have just noted. In terms of
concrete policy, Corbyn also promotes material inclusion. He is opposed
to the “welfare chauvinism”32 promoted by the populist radical right,
instead promising to distribute state resources to all citizens, regardless of
wealth or ethnicity, and guaranteeing that EU nationals living in the UK
will continue to have access to these services after Brexit. His proposed
National Education Service to provide “cradle-to-grave learning that is
free at the point of use”33 is a good example of this approach. Nonethe-
less, while Corbyn has stated clearly that migrants should not be blamed
for the failings of public services,34 the 2017 election manifesto to some
extent accepted the link that exclusionary populists often make between
migration and pressure on public services by promising that migration
law under a Labour government would “replace income thresholds with a
28 Vyara Apostolova et al. “General Election 2017: Results and Analysis, Briefing Paper
no. 7979, 8”, House of Commons Library, accessed 22 November, https://researchbrie
fings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7979/CBP-7979.pdf.
29 Ibid., 44.
30 Ibid., 12.
31 Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism:
Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America,” Government and Opposition, 48:2,
2013, pp. 147–174.
32 Ibid., 160.
33 Labour Party, “For the Many, Not the Few: Labour Party Manifesto”, 2017, accessed
22 November 2019, https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/.
34 For example, Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
prohibition on recourse to public funds.”35 This stance may be explained

by a desire to tap into popular concerns regarding immigration: indeed,
while attitudes to immigration have softened in recent years, a majority
of British people would like immigration to be reduced.36
With regard to political inclusion, this is something all populists seek
to promote in the name of popular sovereignty. To the extent that this
involves, rhetorically at least, giving power to the people rather than the
elites, it is often considered as “real” democracy. As Canovan notes:
Democracy is understood as government by the sovereign people, not

as government by politicians, bureaucrats or judges. Furthermore, the
linked concept of sovereignty implies that much more is involved than
mere popular elections or consultation: democracy demands that political
decisions be under popular control.37
Yet, all too often the central position assumed by the leader means that
the voice of the people is diluted.38 The leader, as the embodiment of
the popular will, speaks in place of the people themselves rather than
genuinely engaging with them. Instruments of direct democracy, such as
referenda, often fail to involve citizens in political deliberation. Instead,
they tend “to ratify what the populist leader has already discerned to
be the genuine popular interest.”39 Consequently, “populism without
participation is an entirely coherent position.”40
Jeremy Corbyn is very much in favor of popular sovereignty. Indeed,
it is the essence of what he describes as the “new politics” that he seeks
35 Labour Party, 2017, op. cit., 28.

36 Scott Blinder and Lindsay Richards, “UK Public Opinion toward Immigration:
Overall Attitudes and Levels of Concern”, Migration Observatory Briefing, University of
Oxford, 2019, accessed 22 November 2019, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/2019-Briefing-Public_Opinion_Immigration_Attitudes_Con
cern.pdf.
37 Margret Canovan, “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of
democracy,” in Yves Mény, Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge,
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 25–44, 33.
38 Yves Mény, Yves Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, in Yves Mény,
Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave: 2002,
pp. 1–24, 13.
39 Jan-Werner Müller, op. cit., 29.
40 Ibidem.
50 E. BELL
to promote—politics that should encourage “engagement and involve-

ment,” enabling ordinary people to influence official policy.41 As I have
argued elsewhere,42 proposed Labour policies do offer the promise of
more popular participation in politics, firstly through the Labour Party
itself by enabling members to have more direct influence over the
direction of policy. For example, the National Executive Committee—
the Party’s powerful policy-making body—recently accepted three extra
Constituency Labour Party members on its board. Such steps run counter
to most discourse about populist politics which argues that “populist
parties are particularly prone to internal authoritarianism.”43 In partic-
ular, they are generally seen to be organized around an authoritarian
leader. Here again, Corbyn hardly conforms to the populist stereotype.
While he may be subject to some hero worship, evident in the chants
of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” to the theme of the White Stripe’s “Seven
Nation Army,” Corbyn does not deliberately court such attention and
has been genuinely surprised by his popular support. In common with
other populists, Corbyn has an “outsider vibe,”44 despite the fact that he
has been a Labour MP since 1983. Yet, it many ways he is genuinely an
outsider, with a history of rebellion against the leadership, who refuses
to succumb to the political games of spin and managerialism. He appears
to be genuinely authentic, not just in style but also on account of his
ideologically coherent policies.
Secondly, popular participation is encouraged by moving beyond the
statism of the past to improve the democratic accountability of public
institutions and to facilitate ownership and control of the economy
following the cooperative model. Concurrently, the large corporations
which are seen to represent “the few” are to have their power curbed,
notably by reducing their role in Britain’s economy via renationaliza-
tion projects and a limitation of public–private partnerships. In housing,
for example, local people are to be given a greater say in regeneration
41 Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech to the Labour Party Conference,” Brighton, 29 September

2015.
42 Emma Bell, “The 2017 Labour General Election Campaign: Ushering in a ‘New Poli-
tics’?” Revue française de la civilisation britannique 23:2, 2018, accessed 22 November
2019, https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/2029.
43 Jan-Werner Müller, op.cit., 36.
44 Alex Nunns, The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s improbable path to power, London and
New York: OR Books, 2016, p. 124.
projects that affect them: Corbyn has pledged that a Labour government
would ensure that councils planning redevelopment seek the agreement
of existing tenants and leaseholders via a ballot. Already, Mayor Sadiq
Khan has promised to roll this policy out across London.
Corbyn’s appeal to the people would therefore appear to be symboli-
cally, materially and politically inclusive, even if an exception may be made
regarding economic migrants. This does not seem to be a mere rhetorical
strategy but has genuine content. Nonetheless, Corbyn does follow the
classic populist strategy of creating antagonism between his electorate and
the elites: between “the many” and “the few” in his parlance. As Laclau
notes, “There is no populism without the discursive construction of an
enemy.”45 So, who is “the enemy” for Corbyn?
Denigrating “The Few”

The answer to this question should already be clear from the discussion so
far: it is, to quote Corbyn, “the ruling elite, the City and the tax dodgers”
who form a “cosy club” that “we”—read “the many”—do not fit into.46
The notion of a “cosy club” suggests the existence of a conspiracy by the
elites against the interests of “the many.” In his 2017 conference speech,
Corbyn went even further and accused the conservatives of being “the
servant” of global corporations rather than of the people.47 For Taggart,
the belief that the state is “in hock” to organized interests, is a common
populist trope.48 Painting political representatives as untrustworthy and
self-interested helps to elevate “the people” to a special status. Their
wisdom is regarded as superior to that of the rulers—only “the people”
can know best how to protect their own interests against the corrupt
elites. They are also endowed with a superior sense of morality.49 This
helps to foster “the politics of simplicity” (Taggart 2002, p. 76) or “the
politics of the Stammtisch (the pub), i.e. a highly emotional and simplistic
45 Ernesto Laclau, op. cit., 39.

46 Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy, “Speech on Launch of the Labour Party manifesto,”
Reported by the BBC, 20 April 2017, accessed 22 November 2019, https://www.bbc.
com/news/uk-politics-39649119.
48 Paul Taggart, 2000, op. cit., 110.
49 Jan-Werner Müller, op. cit., 19–20.
52 E. BELL
discourse that is directed at the ‘gut feelings’ of the people” (Mudde

2004, p. 542). Moral discourse becomes substituted for genuine political
debate, as arguments about “right” and “wrong” cannot be empirically
disproved, thus quashing dissent (Panizza 2005, pp. 22–23). It is not
just the elites who are seen as morally corrupt but the entire “rigged”
system of which they are a part. This in turn helps to foster disdain for
the representative system of politics itself.
Corbyn certainly encourages popular sovereignty, as noted above, and
is critical of how the representative system currently functions. He believes
that “our democracy needs to break out of Westminster into all parts of
our society and economy where power is unaccountable.”50 However,
there is a risk that, in doing so, he may actually encourage depoliticiza-
tion if people reject government, democratic institutions, and the state
by taking power into their own hands.51 As Glaser notes, in Corbyn’s
rhetoric “there is a problematic slippage between neoliberal governments
and the political system itself.”52 This is true to a certain extent. However,
Corbyn is not opposed to the parliamentary system and, for his whole
political career, has worked within that system. It is also to be noted
that while recognizing the democratic deficit in Westminster and the
need “to extend democracy,” the Labour Party’s last manifesto made no
far-reaching proposal to fundamentally change the Westminster represen-
tative system beyond completing reform of the House of Lords to ensure
it is democratically elected.53 It seems that popular sovereignty is to be
complementary to parliamentary sovereignty rather than a substitute for
it. The aim is to ensure that “the few” embody the popular will.
Degrees of Populism
To the extent that Corbyn helps to foster political antagonism between
the elites and the people, he may certainly appear to be a populist,
albeit of a left-wing variety that favors a generally inclusive vision of the

51 Eliane Glaser, “The Authenticity of Hope”, in Mark Perryman (ed.), The Corbyn
Effect, Chadwell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017, pp. 125–137, 128–129.
52 Ibid., 132.
53 Labour Party, 2017, op. cit.
people. Yet, as Laclau points out, the attempt to create dichotomy in poli-
tics is “the very condition of political action.”54 Corbyn’s Labour Party
does not therefore differ significantly from other contemporary political
parties, be they on the left or right, “extremist” or “mainstream.” Yet, as
we shall see, the difference is one of degree only.
The Labour Party has always embraced a certain degree of populism,
portraying itself as the party best placed to represent the interests of the
working class, even though it has simultaneously sought to secure the
support of a broader class base. Nonetheless, it has rarely been associ-
ated with populism, at least until the advent of New Labour. The late
political scientist Peter Mair suggested that New Labour, under the lead-
ership of Tony Blair, embraced “populist democracy,” appealing directly
to the people and using plebiscites to win support, most notably for
significant constitutional reform.55 In doing so, he essentially bypassed
the party, a structure that was increasingly seen as irrelevant in an era of
non-partisan politics. For Mair, Blair’s “populist democracy” was more
legitimate than “traditional party democracy” since it could appeal to
the people beyond ideology. Yet, this is to ignore the essentially ideo-
logical nature of New Labour—despite its claims to the contrary—and
the authoritarian dimension of Blair’s populism. As I have argued else-
where,56 rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue with the public
about complex issues surrounding crime, immigration, and the welfare
state, New Labour instead exploited popular fears, introducing knee-jerk
policies apparently rooted in the “common sense” of the people but
which at times ran counter to the public interest. Following Stuart Hall, I
have described these policies as “authoritarian populist,” that is, attempts
“to impose a new regime of social discipline and leadership ‘from above’
which had to be rooted in popular fears and anxieties ‘below’.”57
Hall initially associated authoritarian populism with Thatcherism and
the new right, suggesting that was a means of manufacturing consent.
54 Ernesto Laclau, op. cit.

55 Peter Mair, “Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy”, in Yves Mény, Yves Surel
(eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave: 2002, pp. 81–100,
96.
56 Emma Bell, Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011.
57 Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the Left, London
and New York: Verso, 1988.
54 E. BELL
Despite the apparent differences between Thatcher and Cameron, the

latter largely followed this strategy, albeit in a more liberal guise.
Cameron’s liberal authoritarianism was populist to the extent that it
sought to manufacture consent for authoritarian policies by associating
them with the values of liberalism and popular empowerment.58 Indeed,
Alexandre-Collier has defined Cameron’s populism as a “rhetoric of
empowerment” which linked up with popular fears about immigration
and EU membership.59 Theresa May, when Home Secretary, similarly
played on fears about immigration, promising to tackle “abuse” in the
asylum system and to limit economic migration that puts strain on public
services in order to focus resources on helping those “in desperate need
of help,” in keeping with Britain’s liberal tradition of providing refuge
when necessary.60 May has also indulged in populist rhetoric with regard
to the vote to leave the EU, describing it as “quiet revolution”61 and
equating the 52% of “Leave” voters with “the people,”62 thus boosting
her own legitimacy when it comes to negotiating with the EU. Inciden-
tally, Corbyn also described the vote as “a democratic decision” which
must be respected.63 May adopted similar rhetoric to Corbyn when she
analyzed the referendum results as resulting from a “sense – deep, and
profound and let’s face it often justified – that many people have today
that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.”64 She
also picked up the notion of elite conspiracy, criticizing “the system” and
lamenting that “too many people in positions of power behave as though
they have more in common with international elites than with the people
58 Emma Bell, Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015.
59 Agnès Alexandre-Collier, “How Populist was David Cameron?”, Juncture 23:2, 2016,
pp. 116–125.
60 Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Manchester, 6 October
2015.
61 Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Birmingham, 5
October 2016.
62 Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Manchester, 4 October
2017.
64 May, 2016.
down the road.”65 Again, like Corbyn, she promised “to root out injus-
tice and to give everyone in our country a voice.”66 Yet, in a major point
of difference, she argued that the best way to realize this “British dream”
would be to promote the free market as “the greatest agent of collec-
tive human progress ever created.”67 On this point, May’s right-wing
populism perhaps has more in common with the populism of UKIP that
that of Corbyn. Yet, Taggart suggests that liberalism is incompatible with
populism, suggesting that the latter tends to favor high levels of state
interventionism and even authoritarianism.68 This assertion is simply not
borne out in reality, as I have sought to demonstrate in this section. Since
at least the 1980s in Britain, market liberalism has often been combined
with varying degrees of populism, both on the left and the right of the
political spectrum. Furthermore, populism can be easily combined with
social liberalism, as exemplified by David Cameron. Liberal authoritarian
populism is not therefore a contradiction in terms.
Corbyn’s populism, though present, is distinct from the populism
of New Labour, the Conservatives, or UKIP, for that matter. While,
in common with all, he creates antagonism between the people and
the elites, he has a very different idea about popular sovereignty and
about how best it can be promoted. Unlike right-wing populists,
Corbyn detaches sovereignty from nationalism which tends to define
sovereignty in exclusive ethnic, isolationist terms. This distinction does
not only emerge from the basic distinction between right and left-wing
populisms—it is not only a question of being inclusionary or exclusionary.
Corbyn’s promotion of popular sovereignty entails an attempt to engage
with the real concerns of many people and to deliver genuine empower-
ment. It is far removed from the authoritarian populism associated with
other political parties in the UK at present. Corbyn is responding to a
very real sentiment of disempowerment. Theresa May acknowledged this
feeling but her policies show little promise of addressing it. While she
has promised to introduce some market controls, for instance, tackling
high executive pay and fixing “broken” energy and housing markets by
65 Ibid.
66 May, 2017.
67 Ibid.
68 Paul Taggart, 2000, op. cit., 116.
56 E. BELL
capping energy bills and investing in house-building, the current govern-

ment has made no concrete proposals that would entail a transfer of power
from large corporations to the people. Similarly, Boris Johnson sought to
appeal to popular feelings of injustice by reversing a planned cut to the
corporate tax rate from 19 to 17% in the run-up to the 2019 general elec-
tion, although this masks the fact that the rate had already been cut by
almost ten percentage points since 2010.
Yet, it is this concentration of power that is the chief source of
disempowerment, leading to what Crouch has famously described as post-
democracy whereby “powerful minority interests have become far more
active than the mass of ordinary people in making the political system
work for them.”69 Indeed, the corporate sector, together with the State,
continues to exercise a disproportionate amount of power, especially as it
has become a key partner in the daily business of governance (Bell 2015).
Corbyn, on the other hand, promises not just to control the market,
but to transfer power from the corporate sector to society under plans
to implement cooperative ownership of utilities and public services. The
full details of these plans have not yet been worked out, so it is as yet
difficult to assess how successful they would really be in terms of popular
empowerment. Nonetheless, the initiative does appear to be at least a
step in the right direction in terms of reviving democracy. If it is populist,
it is only populist in the sense understood by the progressive American
People’s Party, founded in Omaha in 1892, which fought against polit-
ical and corporate corruption, particularly that perpetrated by the banking
and railroad sectors, and sought to ensure that the interests of ordinary
people were properly protected (Postel 2007). In other words, it is quite
simply democratic and, like the People’s Party, may be seen in a positive
light.
Anton Jäger criticizes the trend in recent decades to associate populism
“with everything politically odious,” reminding us of the original use of
the concept by the People’s Party (2018). Chantal Mouffe, for her part,
suggests that the Left should “reclaim” populism as a way of reviving
interest in politics and mobilization against the antidemocratic trends
of neoliberalism (2016). Yet, populism has so many different meanings
that it is effectively useless in helping us to understand politics. Instead,
the indiscriminate application of the term merely leads to confusion and
69 Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, p. 19.

obscures the important differences that exist between political programs.

As I will argue in the next section, it is not only populism that may pose
a threat to democracy but also the indiscriminate use of the term.
The Danger of the Populist Slur

In focussing on the danger of populist leaders and movements, it is all
too easy to dismiss the grievances of their supporters. These grievances
have various sources but can generally be seen to result from people’s
increasing rejection of the limits placed on popular sovereignty. Within
the European Union, there has been a reaction against the technocracy
which has dogged European institutions since the end of the Second
World War but become particularly salient in the wake of the Eurocrisis.
As Müller explains, in order to avoid the abuses of fascism, democracy
was “constrained” by parliamentary and extra-parliamentary checks and
balances and the creation of supranational institutions: the “people” were
deliberately kept at a distance from decision-making processes.70 With
the development of the EU and the Eurozone, this trend has been exac-
erbated, most notably with the handling of the debt crisis. In Greece,
the Troika showed total disregard for popular sovereignty by forcing
the Syriza government to accept its austerity-imposing bailout package,
despite the fact that 61% of Greeks voted in a referendum against it. The
German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble refused to renegotiate
the offer, stating “Elections cannot be allowed to change an economic
programme of a member state.”71
Neoliberalism and globalization have exacerbated these trends toward
the weakening of popular and national parliamentary sovereignty. As
Gerbaudo has put it:
[The] alienation of political power by global market forces… gives rise to

demands to ‘take back control’, as expressed in the flagship slogan of the
Brexit referendum campaign: a demand for territorial self-determination
and autonomy as a reaction to a world in which global flows are perceived
as undermining all attempts at territorial control.72
70 Muller, op. cit., p. 93.

71 Wolfgang Schäuble (2015), quoted by Yanis Varoufakis, “Why We Must Save the
EU”, The Guardian, 5 April 2016.
72 Gerbaudo, op. cit.
58 E. BELL
Despite the promises that neoliberalism would return power from the
State to the individual, the reality has been quite different. Far from
filtering downward, power has been sucked further upward toward inter-
national institutions and corporations. The material consequences—rising
inequality, stagnating salaries, declining public services—have in turn
exacerbated resentment toward immigration. Movements from both the
left and the right of the political spectrum are now united in seeking to
return control to the nation-state.
Furthermore, the consensual nature of neoliberal politics has exacer-
bated feelings of disempowerment. In what Mouffe describes as a “post-
political age,” mainstream parties have embraced the same neoliberal
agenda, thus failing to channel political antagonisms.73 These antag-
onisms have thus searched for another outlet, often in the form of
extremist parties. As Mény and Surel note, populism “points to the
malfunctioning of the linkages between citizens and governing elites.”74
However, labelling any attempt to diverge from the neoliberal consensus
as “populist” is to risk stoking the fires of grievance by failing to take
demands for popular sovereignty seriously.
Paradoxically, mainstream politicians often tend to mirror the tactics
of the populists they criticize by simplifying the political debate. They
are presented as “good democrats,” the protectors of liberal democ-
racy, while their opponents are depicted as dangerous extremists (Mouffe
2005, p. 57). In taking the high moral ground, they fail to engage in real
political argument and to address popular grievances that may lead people
to support their opponents. As I suggested earlier, the term “populism” is
used as a slur to denigrate one’s opponents. Yanis Varoufakis, the former
Greek finance minister, has claimed, “For the establishment, anyone who
does well electorally by challenging its favorite sons and daughters is
dismissed as a populist” (2016). For Theresa May, populism is socialism
(2016) and therefore “bad,” thus precluding any proper debate on the
merits of the form of socialism proposed by her chief political oppo-
nent. Furthermore, the populist label taints all those associated with it
as a threat to democracy on account of its apparent preference for direct
democracy over representative democracy (e.g., Baggini 2016). Yet, the
73 Mouffe, 2005, op. cit.

74 Meny, Surel, 2002, op. cit., 15.
two are not necessarily in opposition. Indeed, in recent years the main-
stream defenders of representative democracy have themselves been open
to direct democracy via mechanisms such as the referendum. It would
surely be foolish to think that representative democracy can continue
to function in the way it does, especially given the decline of deference
and the political disaffection encouraged by neoliberal consensus politics.
To insist that mainstream parties continue to support this consensus is a
denial of political pluralism and, as such, a real threat to democracy.
It is worth highlighting one final way in which the overuse of the term
populism is unhelpful. While populism is generally considered to be a
negative term, it has not entirely lost its connotations with democracy and
the popular. This many enable extreme right-wing parties to claim more
legitimacy than if they were labelled as fascist, for example. The danger is
that they can hide their extremism behind a cloak of normalcy, blurring
the lines between what is acceptable and unacceptable in contemporary
democracy.
Conclusion
This paper set out to assess to what extent Jeremy Corbyn and the poli-
cies that he proposes are really populist. It found that although Corbyn
certainly shares many characteristics commonly identified with populism,
he does not succumb to the demagoguery that is embraced by many
populist leaders. Furthermore, he cannot be considered as any more
populist that mainstream political leaders such as Blair and Cameron
but he is differentiated from the latter by his rejection of authoritarian
populism and desire to politically empower ordinary people. If populism
can be found across the political spectrum, the very utility of the term
is thus questionable. Rather than serving as a useful conceptual tool to
understand current political trends, populism has instead become a form
of slander which serves to delegitimize popular grievances about a polit-
ical system that leaves them disempowered and unrepresented. Careless
use of the term can even be dangerous to democracy to the extent that it
precludes proper debate about political alternatives.
When attempting to understand the differences between political
movements, it is more useful to analyze to what extent they are truly
democratic, rather than to what extent they are populist. The litmus test
of any party’s democratic credentials in the twenty-first century must be
60 E. BELL
popular empowerment through the representative system—the sugges-

tion is not that people take politics entirely into their own hands, simply
that they are properly consulted and their best interests represented. But
it is necessary to adopt a broader view of representation to ensure that
ordinary people are not just represented in Westminster but also in polit-
ical parties, local councils and, perhaps, on the new cooperative boards
that Labour proposes should control certain public services. Focussing
on parties’ democratic credentials rather than the extent to which they
are populist puts into stark relief the main difference between Corbyn’s
Labour Party and the ruling conservatives. The latter, together with
UKIP, freely adopt populist rhetoric about empowerment and control
while simultaneously doing nothing to fundamentally tackle the causes of
disempowerment (despite what they may claim), thus risking exacerbating
popular grievances when their promises are left unfulfilled. Labour, on the
contrary, seeks to revive political antagonisms and engage and empower
people to participate in political debate in the search for effective political
alternatives. Surely this is the best medicine for our ailing democracies.
Lyon, autumn 2019.
CHAPTER 4
Is Podemos a Populist Party? an Analysis of Its

Discourse and Political Strategy
Mathieu Petithomme
“Populism is necessary in democracy to represent the excluded of the

social and political system.”1 Undoubtedly, such a quote of Pablo Iglesias
would have been approved by the political philosopher Ernesto Laclau,
defender of a “positive” vision of the phenomenon.2 Populism is one of
the most commented political trends today.3 Many authors argue that
it is on the rise.4 In the common public discourse, it is generally used
1 Pablo Iglesias, Las mañanas de la Cuatro, 30 August 2015.

2 Ernesto Laclau, On the Populist Reason, London, Verso, 2008.
3 Cas Mudde, “How Populism Became the Concept That Defines Our Age”, The
Guardian, 22 November 2018.
4 See for instance the classical work of Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism
in Western Europe, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1994; Margaret Canovan, “Trust the People!
Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy”, Political Studies, 47:1, 1999, p. 2–16; Yves
Mény, Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke, Palgrave,
2002.
M. Petithomme (B)
University of Burgundy-Franche-Comté, Besançon, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_4
62 M. PETITHOMME
as synonymous of demagogy and extremism while being connoted nega-

tively: using simplistic arguments, populism would be a threat to rational
political debates and to democracy itself. But there is nothing really new
about it: US historians used the concept to describe the agrarian populists
of the mid-nineteenth century, as well as their French colleagues to qualify
the “Boulangist” movement at the same period or the “Poujadist” revolt
in the 1950s. “Peronism” in Argentina, left-wing Latin American leaders
in the 2000s (Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa etc.), or such
different actors like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen or Jean-
Luc Mélenchon in France and their respective parties, are all commonly
qualified as “populists.” In this article, I understand populism as a polit-
ical discourse and emotional rhetoric, as a form of doing politics more
than an ideology. According to Pierre-André Taguieff, populism can exist
in democratic and authoritarian regimes, usually emerges in contexts of
“legitimacy crisis of the political or economic system” and characterizes
“a political style and rhetoric using the appeal to the people against the
elite.”5
Cas Mudde, one of the most recognized specialists of the topic,
defends that populism exploits certain social representations against the
elites, the political and economic systems, while right-wing populism
more specifically would frequently mobilize nationalism: “populism
considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous antag-
onistic groups: ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and argues that
politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of
the people.”6 In practice, “populist politicians almost always combine it
with other ideologies, such as nativism on the right and socialism on
the left.”7 He recognizes that “the relationship between populism and
liberal democracy is complex” and includes both positive and negative
elements. On the one hand, populism “brings to the fore issues that
large parts of the population care about, but that the political elites want
to avoid discussing; think about immigration for the populist right or
austerity for the populist left.”8 It can also fight against “the exclusion
5 Pierre-André Taguieff, “Political Science Confronts Populism: From a Conceptual

Mirage to a Real Problem”, Telos, 103, 1995, p. 43.
pp. 541–563.
7 Ibid., p. 543.
8 Cas Mudde, “The Problem with Populism”, The Guardian, 17 February 2015, p. 23.
4 IS PODEMOS A POPULIST PARTY? AN ANALYSIS … 63
of controversial areas from the democratic process” through so-called

“independent” or technocratic institutions, or because a de facto collusion
prevails between political and economic elites, “leaving virtually no space
for democratic opposition.”9 In a certain way, populists’ strategy would
be linked with Kirchheimer’s “opposition in principle”: beyond the tradi-
tional “loyal opposition” (regarding policies within the existing system),
they would question the whole constitutional regime.10 However, Cas
Mudde considers that the negative side of populism is that it would be
“monist” and “moralist,” denying the existence of divisions of interests
within the people and rejecting the legitimacy of political opponents:
“as the populist are the vox populi, ie the voice of all the people,”
anyone with a different view speaks for “special interests,” i.e., the elite.
In short, “populism is an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic
liberalism.”11
Emerging on the political scene in 2014, Podemos took by surprise
all of its opponents. But to what extent can it be considered a populist
party? This article proposes to answer this question on the basis of a
thick qualitative analysis of its discourse and political strategy. In the
background of this work, the author has conducted several fieldworks
among party activists in Cadiz, Valencia, and Madrid between 2015 and
2019, while studying extensively Podemos leaders’ speeches in newspa-
pers and TV archives. The first and second sections show that the party
effectively proposed an initial populist discourse, an assumed electoral
strategy, trying to represent working classes by mobilizing transversal cate-
gories. Then, I nevertheless illustrate how “populism” has been actively
used by its opponents as a political tool and concept to caricature and
disqualify the new party organization. Third, I show how Podemos lead-
ers’ have tried to reverse their stigma, trying to modify the terms of
the political debate and justify that a form of “democratic radicalism”
is necessary in democracy. Finally, the last section studies its program,
showing its evident evolution from left-wing radicalism to more moderate
propositions.
9 Ibid., p. 24.
10 Otto Kirchheimer, “The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes”, Social
Research, 24:1, 1957, p. 128–129.
11 Cas Mudde, Op. Cit., 2015, p. 24.
64 M. PETITHOMME
An Initial Populist Discourse: Representing

Working Classes Through Transversal Categories
Why has Podemos been so quickly characterized as a “populist party”?
A clear answer is that it is true that during its emergence phase,
Pablo Iglesias’ campaign discourses used Manichaean and easily intelli-
gible oppositions: “the honest people/the corrupt elites”; “those from
above/those from below”; “new/old politics”; “the common sense of
the people/the oligarchy”; “the social majority/the privileged minority”
etc. Such processes of political communication are commonly considered
as typical of populism, alongside the ambition to “dichotomize the polit-
ical space.”12 Another analogy with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela was the
initial willingness to create a mass popular movement based on horizontal
and more inclusive tools of participatory democracy, while also paradoxi-
cally using a “hyper-leadership” through a personalization process around
the General Secretary. But in my view, for a number of reasons, Podemos
cannot be characterized as an “illiberal” movement as Cas Mudde tends to
consider.13 First, even though certain discursive tendencies are common
with “Chavismo,” the political contexts are completely different and
Podemos remains a democratic party competing and accepting the rules
of a liberal democracy. Second, its discourses cannot all be considered as
“populists”: there is a clear difference between its “campaign discourses”
during meetings on the one hand (more radical and globalizing), and
its “institutional discourses” during TV or parliamentary debates on
the other hand (which are more moderate and closer to the discourses
of classic socialist opposition parties). For instance, the concept of the
political and economic “cast,” actively mobilized in 2014–2016, is no
longer used by Podemos leaders. “Equivalency chains” associating distinct
political actors and processes—a process typical of populism following
Laclau—are also less frequent. In other words, its initial populist discourse
has changed through its institutionalization process.14
Thus, Podemos proposes a discourse with a variable geometry, a
tendency which has been defined as typical of “catch-all parties” that want
12 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, London: Verso, 2008, p. 15.

13 Cas Mudde, “The Problem with Populism”, Op. Cit., 2015, p. 24.
14 Ernesto Laclau, Op. Cit., 2008, p. 96.
to reach power.15 Following Giovanni Sartori, Podemos can be charac-

terized as a protest party with a coalition potential 16 : it tries to conciliate
“a blackmail potential” (to protest and influence the ideology and polit-
ical agenda of other parties, mainly of the PSOE17 ), with the “coalition
potential” of minor parties (to negotiate, reach agreements, and form
governments). It seeks to ally Max Weber’s “ethics of conviction” with
the “ethics of responsibility.”18 Populism can certainly qualify the discur-
sive campaign style of the party, but cannot characterize the nature of the
party itself, nor can it define its overall discourses. But it is clear that,
at least during its emergence phase between 2014 and 2016, Podemos
tried to mobilize working- and middle-classes through transversal cate-
gories. Initially, it refused to be considered as a party and to be labeled
as a “left-wing” formation. It preferred the terms “popular movement”
or “movement of the common sense.” It also clearly appealed to “the
people” against traditional parties, the corrupt elites, and the opposite
interests of dominant economic powers.
According to historian Santos Juliá, such research of “transversality”
distinguishes Podemos from traditional radical left-wing parties (such as
Izquierda Unida, IU), through a less ideological discourse and a willing-
ness to convince more broadly the overall electorate (and not only the
already convinced).19 In that way, it was particularly clear how Podemos
tried to focus its proposals and redefine the public agenda on the basis of
concrete social demands: for instance, it politicized the right to housing
(in line with existing social movements such as the Platform of Affected
by Mortgages (PAH in Spanish) in Barcelona), the critique of precarious-
ness, or the impunity regarding political corruption. Its motto, “Yes we
Can,” and even the name of the party, directly imported from Barack
Obama’s 2008 campaign focus on a positive and generalist political
15 Otto Kirchheimer, “The Transformation of the West European Party Systems”, in J.

La Palombara, M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 177–200.
16 Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, Colchester,
ECPR Press, [1976] 2005.
17 Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), main center-left
party.
18 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, London, Fortress Press, [1919] 1965.
19 El País, 8 August 2014.
66 M. PETITHOMME
agenda. Podemos also proposed a new political offer in line with the “15-
M” which emerged in May 2011, known as the Indignados movement,
which mobilized Spanish young generations around demands of participa-
tion and democracy. Even if Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero have been
active members of the Communist Youths, and that the party belongs to
the European United Left group (GUE/NGL) in the European Parlia-
ment, Podemos refuses to be labeled as a “communist” party, contrary
to Syriza whose acronym signifies “radical left coalition.” However, over
time, the Spanish electorate has clearly positioned the party at the left of
the PSOE,20 especially after its alliance with IU in May 2016 (renewed
since then through the Confederal Group “Unidos Podemos”).
Populism as an Assumed Electoral Strategy

While it is too simplistic to reduce Podemos to a populist party, it is true
that populism, as a type of political discourse, has been used as an assumed
electoral strategy to emerge in the Spanish party system between 2014
and 2016. The justifications of Pablo Iglesias himself, published in an
article entitled “Podemos: the party of the working classes,” demonstrate
such premeditated strategy:
We are associated with concepts like ‘regeneration’, ‘novelty’ and ‘youth’,

but our reference field must be to become the political force of reference
of the impoverished working- and middle classes. That’s why we have to
propose a bitter and class speech with a plebeian style, which must even
be visible in our distinct way of dressing us up. Podemos should be the
party of the working-class, ‘the people’s party’ in the broad and literal
sense of the term, since the traditional left, becoming more managerial
than popular, has somehow given up this electorate.21
It is undeniable that the founders of the party (Juan Carlos Monedero,

Carolina Bescansa, Ìñigo Errejon etc.) have used politically their theoret-
ical knowledge of politics. Pablo Iglesias accepts Perry Anderson’s ideas
of the “historical defeat of the left,” defending that “the radical left has
no prospect of electoral victory if it stays in its traditional political space.”
20 Pool El País /Metroscopia, November 2, 2014.

21 “Podemos: el partido de las clases populares”, Público, 19 May 2015.
Indeed, “when our adversaries dub us the ‘radical left’ and try, inces-
santly, to identify us with its symbols, they push us onto terrain where
their victory is easier. Our most important political-discursive task was to
contest the symbolic structure of positions, to fight for the ‘terms of the
conversation’. In politics, those who decide the terms of the contest deter-
mine much of its outcome.”22 The choice to propose a more “transversal”
discourse “would have nothing to do with moderation or the idea to
abandon our principles,” but would only illustrate “a strategic adaptation
to the media constraints of the political debate.”23 For instance,
When we insist on talking about evictions, corruption and inequality, for

example, and resist getting dragged into debates on the form of the state
(monarchy or republic), historical memory or prison policy, it doesn’t mean
that we don’t have a stance on those issues or that we’ve ‘moderated’ our
position. Rather, we assume that, without the machinery of institutional
power, it makes no sense at this point to focus on zones of struggle that
would alienate us from the majority, who are not ‘on the left’.24
According to post-election polls, such discourse has attracted students

and young working-class generations, but also traditional IU25 voters
and abstainers. In the aftermath of the economic crisis (2008–2015), it
responded to new social demands and to the radicalization process of
part of the left-wing electorate disappointed by the PSOE’s austerity poli-
cies.26 Hence, its initial populist discourse has enabled it to remobilize
certain sectors of the Spanish electorate, while enhancing politicization
and popular participation. That’s why, following Alexandre Dorna, we can
consider “that when the popular masses are for a long time excluded from
the political arena, populism, far from being an obstacle, is a guarantee
of democracy, because it avoids that it turns into pure management.”27
However, for other authors like Patrick Charaudeau, populism would
consist in “claiming the people and their deep aspirations” through a
22 Pablo Iglesias, “Understanding Podemos”, New Left Review, no. 93, May 2015,
p. 18.
23 Ibid., p. 18.
24 Izquierda Unida (United Left), main post-communist party since 1986.
25 Ibid., p. 19.
26 CIS (Sociological Research Centre) investigation, Madrid, June 2014.
27 Alexandre Dorna, Le populisme, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999, p. 5.
68 M. PETITHOMME
discourse that would “manipulate the political reality and dramatizing it

to the extreme.”28 But Podemos does not manipulate more than its oppo-
nents the political reality in its favor. It proposes a simple discourse, tries
to “speak true” denouncing social injustice and “politicizing the pain.”29
It uses more emotions in its campaigns than traditional parties, trying to
mobilize “sentimental citizens”30 on this basis, even though Pablo Igle-
sias’ TV interventions are more based on rational arguments using figures
and examples from people’s daily lives.
Populism as a Tool to Disqualify

Political Adversaries
According to Francisco Marhuenda, newspaper editor of La Razón and
leading TV commentator, “the model of Podemos is Chávez’s Venezuela.
It would be an economic ruin for Spain and an undemocratic backtracking
for Spain.”31 The sudden irruption of Podemos has destabilized all polit-
ical forces: the PSOE, because it directly encroaches on its political space;
the PP,32 faced with a more oppositional opponent; IU, which no longer
has the monopoly of radicalism on the left; and even Basque and Catalan
nationalists who have to face a party that proposes a “third way,” federal
or confederal, beyond centralism and independentism. Hence, its polit-
ical adversaries have actively used the concept of populism to disqualify
Podemos in the political space. The political oppositions, involving a large
spectrum of actors, which was designed to try to prevent its institution-
alization, tells us a lot about the negative conception of populism in the
media, the common language, and political representations. Pablo Iglesias
is clearly conscious that “the political struggle is a struggle for the defi-
nition of the dominant frames of interpretation of the reality.”33 Being
28 Patrick Charaudeau, “Réflexions pour l’analyse du discours populiste”, Mots. Les

langages du politique, 97, 2011, pp. 102.
29 El País, 11 October 2016.
30 George E. Marcus, The Sentimental Citizen, Emotions in Democratic Politics,
Pennsylvania University Press, 2002.
31 Francisco Marhuenda, newspaper editor of La Razón, in La Sexta Noche, 24 January
2015.
32 Partido Popular (Popular Party), leading right-wing party.
33 “Una nueva transición”, El País, 19 July 2015.
able to build a representation of “the populist enemy,” it is winning the

discursive battle by ostracizing an actor and keeping him at the margin of
the mainstream political spectrum.
In that sense, it is undeniable that Podemos has been the victim of a
hard smear campaign. The party has been assimilated to class struggle
and revolutionary socialism through the association with “Chávez’s
Venezuela,” presented as “close to ETA’s terrorists,” to “the revolu-
tionary militias that triggered the civil war,”34 and even to “the Iran of
the ayatollahs and all the assassins of the world.”35 Its leaders have been
depreciated as “Bolivarians” by Felipe González,36 or accused “to be with
Castroism, chavism and ETA” by Esperanza Aguirre, the former President
of the PP in Madrid. Its adversaries have also tried to stigmatize the party
by associating it with threats for democracy: “extremism” (“its leaders
come from the far left”37 ); a supposed “anti-system” nature (“there are
anti-systems that do not want to respect the Constitution and European
rules”38 ); crowd’s manipulation (“Iglesias’ supporters follow him like a
guru”39 ); Spain’s rupture (“they make a pact with those who want to
break Spain”40 ). The idea that “they are financed by Venezuela” or that
“they want the King’s head,” have been actively promoted by its oppo-
nents to scare voters and limit the electoral progression of the party. Even
the PSOE, worried of the emergence of a new competitor on the left,
approved an internal document in 2014 with the strategy “to present the
movement to the public as a far-left organization.”41 However, all these
caricature arguments are false, and some fake news against Podemos have
even been condemned by justice.42
These harsh attacks on the party can illustrate a perfect case study of
how populism, beyond a defined type of emotional discourse against the
34 Eduardo Inda, La Sexta Noche, 11 March 2014.

35 Alfonso Rojo, La Sexta Noche, 18 March 2014.
36 El Mundo, 9 September 2014.
37 Pedro Sánchez, Telediario, Antena 3, 20 November 2015.
38 Mariano Rajoy, TV Declaration, La 1, 24 January 2015.
39 Eduardo Inda, La Sexta Noche, 15 October 2014.
40 Albert Rivera, Telecinco, 20 August 2016.
41 “Documento estratégico”, PSOE, 25 November 2014.
42 The editorialists Alfonso Rojo and Eduardo Inda have been condemned for
defamatory comments.
70 M. PETITHOMME
elite and traditional parties, can also be understood as a powerful concep-

tual tool to disqualify political adversaries. In Podemos’ case, the idea
was to associate the party to “radical” tendencies and groups in order
to keep some voters away from the party, especially women (tradition-
ally less attracted by extremism43 ), less politicized citizens, voters close
to a form of Spanish nationalism, the eldest part of the electorate, and
middle classes, potentially more afraid of a more divisive socialist model.
The obvious goal was to create a conservative reflex among the electorate.
The fact that Ciudadanos, a new right-wing and liberal party, entirely took
up Podemos’ ideas on “democratic regeneration” in the 2015 legisla-
tive campaign (transparency of the allowances of elected officials, fight
against corruption etc.), while nationalist parties (the PNV and EH Bildu)
took up its socio-economic positions in the 2016 Basque regional elec-
tion, show that its diagnosis was coherent with changing social demands.
That’s why, following the writer Juan José Millás, “the populist lawsuit”
against the party would rather illustrate “the populism of those who
denounce populism.”44 Indeed, these discursive attempts at disqualifi-
cation are themselves akin to the “populist strategy” evoked by Ernesto
Laclau to “dichotomize the political space,”45 by assigning the newcomer
an opponent position at the margins of the political game. It also follows
Annie Collovald’s critical perspective, who considers that the concept of
populism is “mainly used in public debates by the so-called media experts
and the dominant elites to try to disqualify those who could compete with
their visions of acceptable political discourses and morals.”46
The “Reversal of the Stigma”

“There is nothing more populist than disguising Miguel Cañete [head of
the PP’s European list in 2014] as a peasant and get him on a tractor to
43 See, the classical book of Adorno on the “authoritarian personality” and sociological
tendencies linked with radicalism. Cf. Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality,
London: Verso, [1957] 2019.
44 El País, 27 June 2014, p. 12.
45 Ernesto Laclau, Op. Cit., 2008, p. 15.
46 Annie Collovald, Le “populisme du FN”, un dangereux contresens, Bellecombe-en-
Bauges: Croquant Editions, 2004, p. 50.
show his closeness to the rural world.”47 Such a sentence was Pablo Igle-
sias’ answer to the affirmation of the journalist Luis Gómez: “some people
accuse you of populism.” In its classical book of sociology, Stigma. Notes
on the management of spoiled identity, Erving Goffman evokes the process
of formation and reversal of social stigma. To be stigmatized would imply
“to possess a devalued identity, judged inferior to others.”48 The stigma
“as an attribute that discredits the bearer” discards a person or a group
from the social game because they can no longer represent “positive social
values.”49 Discrimination and stigmatization are consequently linked by
an effect of “negative feedback.” When Podemos is qualified as a “far
left party,” “close to ETA” or to Chávez, the goal is to stigmatize it (by
association with negative phenomena) and discriminate against it (estab-
lish a different relationship with him than with other political forces). But
Goffman also demonstrates the existence of “a process of reversal of the
stigma”: stigmatized individuals or groups tend to adopt “reactive iden-
tities,” that is to say, to over-assert and claim the depreciated identity.50
Through the formation of an “identity-defense,” the group tries to rein-
force its internal cohesion facing a hostile social environment. The stigma
is mobilized as a means of communication and action, as a revolt against
a situation of domination. The reversal of the stigma consists in striving
for excellence by fully assuming one’s stigma.
Since its foundation, Podemos has consequently tried to reverse the
stigmas assigned to it, a process which can be demonstrated through
various examples. In that way, during the 2015 legislative campaign,
the general José Julio Rodríguez Fernández, Podemos’ candidate in
Zaragoza’s province declared: “if being populist and anti-system is to
think that we cannot come out of an economic crisis by increasing
inequalities and operating massive budget cuts in education and in the
public health system, so yes, I am populist and anti-system.”51 In a
meeting in Zaragoza in May 2016, after having criticized corruption scan-
dals affecting the PP, Pablo Iglesias asserted: “the PP is an anti-system
47 Pablo Iglesias, TV statement, Antena 3, 17 June 2014.

48 Erving Goffman, Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, London,
Penguin, [1974] 1990, p. 12.
49 Ibid., p. 13.
50 Ibid., p. 14.
51 El País, 7 November 2015.
72 M. PETITHOMME
party because some of its leaders do not respect the law. But Podemos is
law and order. And soon we will put democratic order in the system.”52
During the party’s Constituent Congress in 2014, he responded to the
“fear” that his opponents sought to spread toward him, criticizing “the
fear” that would inspire the immobilism of the PP facing the social and
economic crisis:
Some want to scare people by caricaturing Podemos and shouting to

wolves. But what is really scary today in Spain is that contrary to the
government’s speech on the ‘return of growth’, the unemployment rate is
still twice as high as the European average and affects millions of people.
While the number of wealthy citizens rose by 24% last year, 65% of the poor
do not come out of poverty even when they find work. Since the labor
reform, precarious jobs have multiplied. That’s what is really scary and
should mobilize the government rather than manipulating the reality.53
In the sense of these arguments, Podemos leaders have tried to overturn

the stigmas assigned to the party, stressing that its “radicalism” is first and
foremost a “democratic radicalism.”
Paradoxically, the harsh critiques of its opponents, while preventing
the party from overtaking the PSOE and becoming the left-wing alter-
native, have nevertheless helped to normalize it. In many cases, the
caricatures have rather discredited their authors, while strengthening
the support of Podemos activists. While it is true that Latin Amer-
ican “left-wing populist” governments have inspired its leaders (Íñigo
Errejón defended a PhD on Evo Morales’s constituent process in Bolivia;
Juan Carlos Monedero was political advisor in Venezuela, etc.), their
intellectual sources of influence are multiple (Antonio Gramsci, Perry
Anderson, etc.). Nobody stressed that Juan Carlos Monedero did his PhD
in Germany. Pablo Iglesias is also influenced by the mass- and national-
party model of the Communist Italian Party (PCI) in the 1960s, which
he discovered during an academic exchange, while doing his PhD on
the tactics and media strategies of anti-globalization movements. Other
activist and intellectual experiences have played a key role: Contrapoder,
a student association using civil disobedience; La Promotora, an academic
52 Pablo Iglesias, campaign speech, Zaragoza meeting, 20 May 2016.

53 Pablo Iglesias, Inauguration speech, Vistalegre’s Constituent Congress, 15 November
2014.
network organizing conferences on critical theory and political change;

the “15-M” and all the urban social movements that developed during
the crisis, especially in the Lavapiés district in Madrid; the experiences
and frustrations of former IU activists in the face of the lack of renewal,
etc. Thus, by completely assuming and trying to reverse the meaning
of certain categories (being “radical”, “anti-system”, “populist,” etc.),
Podemos elaborated a strategy of politicization, with the objective to
contradict their negative connotations and associate such concepts with
positive social demands (rights to housing, work, equality, etc.). Pode-
mos’ success is the result of the self-organization of a new generation of
political militants at the margins of the PSOE and IU, who have assumed
their engagements and more radical discourses, in spite of harsh critiques.
Is the Podemos Program Populist?

Populism is not an ideology. But in their interpretations of the
phenomenon, many authors say that it would be precisely characterized
by the absence of a defined political ideology, or by the association of
conflicting ideological contents. Many extreme-right parties in Europe
are called “populists” because they often associate radical conservative
measures of order and authority (end of immigration, hardening of crim-
inal penalties, etc.) with socializing propositions based on left-wing values.
Other political movements are labeled “populists” because they would
“propose the impossible” (using the concept as synonymous with dema-
gogy), or because certain of their propositions are “anti-conventional”
(questioning the role of existing institutional frameworks, the national
Constitution, the EU, etc.). In that sense, is the Podemos program
populist? We will see that while its initial propositions where radical, the
party has progressively moderated its objectives, using pragmatism and
accepting compromise through coalition formation.
The “economic project for the people” presented during the 2014
European election campaign was influenced by the works of the critical
economists Juan Torres and Vicenç Navarro. It proposed to amend the
labor law adopted by the PP government in 2011, to decrease working
time and promote public investment in the sectors of dependence,
research, and renewable energies54 Podemos sought to be the spokesman
54 “Un proyecto económico para la gente”, Podemos’ economic program, 2014

European elections, April.
74 M. PETITHOMME
of the anti-austerity social movements with a set of socializing proposi-

tions (retirement at 60; nationalization of electricity companies; universal
basic rent) and anti-conventional measures (referendum on the monarchy;
moratorium on the payment of the public debt, etc.). Its initial program
showed a clear filiation with parties of the radical left. But in its quest for
power, the party quickly moderated its proposals (and even removed all
those mentioned above), showing a high degree of ideological flexibility
and strategy typical of government and “electoral-professional” parties.55
For instance, ideologically speaking, Podemos is favorable to the estab-
lishment of a Republic through a “constituent process,” while searching
to recognize Spain as a “plurinational state” and to modify its structure
toward a federation or confederation that would include a new polit-
ical relationship with Catalonia and the Basque Country. However, by
pragmatism and to allow coalition formation with the socialists, the party
accepted, as a minor partner, not to question the position of the PSOE on
Catalonia in the new PSOE-Podemos government formed in December
2019.
During the 2015 municipal elections, the party faded behind local “cit-
izen platforms” including parties, social movement actors, and indepen-
dents. Podemos adopted a national programmatic document including
local transparency and anti-corruption laws, measures of “social urgency”
(fight against social exclusion, territorial inequalities, illegal rental apart-
ments, etc.). Open lists for candidate selection, participatory programs,
and local alliances (Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comú, Cadiz Sí Se
Puede, En Marea in Galicia, etc.) with variable geometry (including
Procès Constituent in Barcelona, IU in Cadiz, Compromís in Valencia,
etc.), allowed Podemos with other actors to obtain symbolic victories
in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Cadiz, Compostela, and Zaragoza. Once
again, these elections illustrated Podemos’ pragmatism, its ability to form
alliances and mobilize civil society actors. Podemos also clearly seeks
to reach power, another fundamental difference with traditional far-left
parties. The local campaigns were very diverse but imbued with populist
references “to put an end to the caste’s power,” while on the contrary
pretending to “empower people” with “a common sense program.”56 In
55 Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power, Cambridge,

56 Íñigo Errejón’s speech, Mostoles meeting, 5 May 2015, participant observation.
a context of recovery of the socialist party after a decade of crisis, Ada

Colau in Barcelona, Joan Ribó in Valencia, and José María Gonzalez in
Cadiz (popular and with encouraging results) were nevertheless re-elected
in May 2019.
Influenced by a team of international advisers (including Thomas
Piketty and James Galbraith), the ten main measures of Podemos’
economic program for the 2015 legislative elections, showed a type of
“heterodox socialism”: minimum incomes; progressive increase of the
minimum wage up to 800 euros; tax reform and fight against tax fraud;
reduction of the public deficit of 3% of GDP (in accordance with the
European rule), but conditional on the reduction of unemployment;
“productive development plan” in the Green economy, energy renova-
tion, and new technologies; “study the possibility to renegotiate the
public debt”; promote renegotiations of personal bank loans to avoid
evictions; retirement at age 63, etc.57 Many of these proposals could
be adopted by a social-democratic party, while others go beyond, in line
with radical left-parties like Syriza in Greece or the Bloco de Esquerda in
Portugal. Certain ideas show communist influences (increase in income
and capital taxes; heritage and corporation tax reforms), others, that of
the anti-globalization movements (Tobin tax; creation of a public bank;
reduced VAT rate on basic necessities). Even Anton Costas, the Pres-
ident of Barcelona’s circle of economists recognized “the seriousness
of these proposals.”58 Podemos has undeniably moderated its program
since 2014, which Pablo Iglesias himself compares with “the Mitterrand
socialism of the ‘joint program’ before the turning point of the rigor
of 1983.59 Its objective would be “to respond to the situation of the
working classes without giving up being modern and progressive.”60
Finally, in 2016 and 2019, a progressive enlargement of its proposals
(with a greater degree of accuracy) could be observed: presented in
a format inspired by the IKEA catalogue and labeled “A Country
Program,”61 its more recent political document illustrates a complete
57 “Propuesta de Programa Económico”, Podemos, 2015 legislative elections, p. 2.

58 El Mundo, 7 November 2015.
59 Pablo Iglesias (dir.), Una nueva transición, Madrid, Akal, 2015, p. 162.
60 Pablo Iglesias, El Periódico de Catalunya, 19 May 2015.
61 “Un programa de país”, Podemos program 2016.
76 M. PETITHOMME
project including issues like foreign policy, disability, ecology, tourism,

equality between men and women, etc.
Conclusion
Thus, to what extent can Podemos be considered as a populist party? To
conclude, I would say yes and no, because the answer we can formulate
to this question is intimately linked with what we understand through
the concept of “populism.” If populism is defined as a type of polit-
ical discourse using the appeal to the people, trying to create a new
popular subject against the elites, which emerges during periods of polit-
ical crises and adopts a transversal discourse, in that case, Podemos
is undoubtedly a typical case of “left-wing populist party.” But if we
consider that populism characterizes “political enterprises which manip-
ulate reality, refuse any political mediation and present an absence of clear
ideology,”62 in that case, Podemos does not correspond to such tenden-
cies. It seems convenient to speak of its “populist strategy” to emerge in
the Spanish political game—something its leaders themselves recognize—
in order to “dichotomize the political space” following Laclau, especially
using Bepe Grillo’s “caste” concept to politicize the “elite-citizens”
cleavage and criticize the ideological proximity between the PSOE and
the PP. However, it is less pertinent to reduce the party to a “pop-
ulist discourse” with uniform characteristics. Following the “electoral-
professional” party model57 mainly focused on vote-seeking strategies
and electoral campaigns, Podemos formulates discourses whose ideolog-
ical components are very different depending on the political context
considered: “emotional” discourses, more provocative and simplistic in
campaign meetings; “empathetic speeches” in TV debates, using citizens’
everyday experiences to arouse identification and sympathy; “expert”
discourses in press conferences, using rational arguments and numer-
ical data to respond to journalists’ injunction of credibility. It is also
quite interesting to note that editorialists and press commentators focus
in a simplistic way on the “caste” concept to catalog the party among
“populist movements” even though it is no longer used by the party.
During its emergence phase, using the same processes, its opponents
tried to caricature Podemos as a “communist” and “extremist” party and
62 Patrick Charaudeau, Op. Cit., 2011, p. 103.

associate it with Venezuela, ETA and threat to democracy. But its foun-
dation in 2014 and its consolidation since then as a key actor defining
the Spanish party system is based on more concrete elements: the crisis of
traditional parties as well as social demands for democratic regeneration
and the renewal of an agenda of left-wing public policies in the after-
math of the 2008 Great Recession and the “15-M” social movement in
2011, in which young generations have played a key role. Through Pablo
Iglesias’ charisma and elaborated arguments in “La Tuerka,” a local-TV
political program created in 2010, the founders of the program and later
on of Podemos, started to spread “counter-hegemonic” discourses in
the public space. In 2012, Pablo Iglesias became a recurring guest of
mainstream TV programs, using his function of “expert” and “professor
of political science” to contradict conservative journalists, repoliticize
numerous political issues and develop his notoriety through a growing
public audience. In fact, behind Podemos’ emergence, there is a clear
process of political communication through the development of a new
type of discourse, more radical but also more precise with an elaborated
story-telling (using figures, historical, and daily-life arguments), along-
side new proposals that corresponded with social demands (fight against
corruption practices and social inequalities, defense of public services,
reform of the political system, etc.).
The detailed analysis of its political program shows that it is closer
to a classical socialist party influenced by social movements’ demands
than to a communist or extreme-left party. It contains a certain dose
of innovation, utopia and of radicality that distinguishes it from clas-
sical social-democratic parties. While the PSOE entered in a deep crisis
between 2010 and 2017, Podemos’ founders emerged in the public scene
through the “15-M” social movement in 2011, La Tuerka, and later on
in mainstream television programs with a new and more radical discourse
of politicization of social issues. Its local alliances to govern with other
left-wing and regionalist parties (IU, the PSOE, Anova, Compromís etc.)
in Madrid and Compostela between 2015 and 2019, and in Barcelona,
Cadiz, and Valencia since 2015, also illustrates its pragmatism and demo-
cratic openness to left-wing alliances. Indeed, Podemos tries to embody a
type of “democratic radicalism,” a party that would “dispute” and “rad-
icalize democracy” in line with Chantal Mouffe’s proposals: since the
1980s, she proposes a “radical democracy” understood not as a “tran-
sition to socialism,” but as a deepening of citizens’ fundamental rights
78 M. PETITHOMME
to housing, health, education, gender, and individual liberties.63 “Real

Democracy Now” was on that point the slogan of the “15-M” move-
ment in Spain. By affirming its willingness to govern and accepting
the game of party alliances and negotiations, Podemos can nevertheless
be distinguished from traditional radical left-parties. It proposes radical
reforms in defense of workers and new rights for all (equality in parental
leaves for instance), but cannot be considered as an “antisystem” party.
Thus, its “populism” was rather a discourse and a strategy of political
communication mainly used during its phase of emergence in 2014–2015:
reintroducing radicality and emotions, it has repoliticized Spanish politics,
remobilized young working- and middle-class generations while shaking
up the party system. But in the next five years, Podemos has changed
through a type of “normalization” process, while creating a more modern
post-communist party at the left of the PSOE. Minor party actor with a
coalition potential, has been able to influence many local governments,
and to oblige the PSOE to accept a left-wing governmental coalition
at the national level, an unprecedent move in Europe since Mitterand’s
“joint program” in 1981 and since the Second Republic in 1936 in Spain.
63 Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Commu-

nity, London and New York, Verso, 1992.
CHAPTER 5
AfD and FPÖ: Rejection

of Immigration—The Basis of a Common
National-Populist Identity?
Patrick Moreau
For the comparative approach of the AfD and the FPÖ and the defi-
nition of what may be called their ideological core, we shall use the
concept of Populist Radical Right Parties.1 The term “nativism” used
in the Anglo-Saxon publications is the key to our analysis.2 From this
1 Terence Ball, “From ‘Core’ to ‘Sore’ Concepts: Ideological Innovation an Conceptual

Change”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 4:3, 1999, pp. 391–396.
2 Henry A. Rhodes, Nativist and Racist Movements in the U.S. and Their After-
math, New Haven, Yale New Haven Teachers Institute, 1994; David Art, Inside the
Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2011; Hans-Georg Betz, “Against the ‘Green Totalitari-
anism’: Anti-Islamic Nativism in Contemporary Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western
Europe”, in C. Schori Liang (ed.), Europe for the Europeans, New York, The Foreign
and Security Policy of the Populist Radical Right, 2nd ed., London, Routledge, 2016,
pp. 33–54.
P. Moreau (B)
University of Strasboug, CNRS, Strasbourg, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_5
80 P. MOREAU
concept, Cas Mudde derives a model describing contemporary radical

right-wing parties with three components: nativism, authoritarianism, and
populism.3 Our paper investigates these dimensions in the comparative
history of AfD and FPÖ, their programs, and their electorates.
Since the late 1970s (FPÖ) and 2015 (AfD), these parties have
introduced an ethnocentric nationalist discourse and programmatic offer
(ethno-pluralist in the programs of both parties). They have politicized
cultural and social issues related to immigration and Islam.4 Their iden-
titary discourse is accompanied by welfare chauvinism, giving preference
to nationals for access to or preservation of resources like social secu-
rity, welfare benefits, jobs, housing, and retirement pensions.5 What does
this concept of national preference cover up? Does it hide an ethnocratic
theory? Both parties are willing to accept the presence of foreigners on
the national territory only if they abandon their culture and adopt that of
the nation. Can we call this racism?
We also need to consider the role of the economy and the crises in the
breakthrough of the AfD and the FPÖ in 2017. Their programs and elec-
toral manifestos—a mixture of economic liberalism and interventionism,
but limited to stronger protectionism—show that this is not an essen-
tial element of their ideology. Fear of an endangered economic future has
only a limited influence on radical electoral choices. But then, how can we
understand the “proletarianization” of these parties and their rootedness
in the German and Austrian lower classes?
Their discourse is clear on one point, however: economic globalization
is considered the cause of decline of the national economy and the reason
of the pauperization of the population, as well as a cultural menace aiming
at the global homogenization of cultures. Immigration is claimed to be
a direct and intended consequence of this globalization. Is this an anti-
capitalist and/or anti-imperialist (especially anti-US) policy?
3 Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge

4 Hans-Georg Betz, Susi Meret, “Revisiting Lepanto: The Political Mobilization Against
Islam in Contemporary Western Europe”, Patterns of prejudice, 43:3–4, 2009, pp. 313–
334.
5 Willem De Koster, Peter Achterberg, Jeroen Van der Waal, “The New Right and the
Welfare State: On the Electoral Relevance of Welfare Chauvinism and Welfare Populism
in the Netherlands”, International Political Science Review, 34:1, 2013, pp. 3–20.
5 AFD AND FPÖ: REJECTION OF IMMIGRATION … 81
Doubtlessly, the model of society of AfD and FPÖ is authoritarian and

securitarian. It is based on adherence to the values of order and discipline,
with the individual having to find his or her personal fulfillment solely
within the framework of the community.6 For both AfD and FPÖ, order
forms the base of “true” freedom, and “the collective interest always takes
precedence over the individual interest.” Are we dealing with an illiberal
political and constitutional model, even a totalitarian one in the sense of
Hannah Arendt?7
The populist dimension manifests itself in the AfD’s and FPÖ’s
discourse: they proclaim themselves the spokespersons of “the people”
against “elites” declared corrupt or incapable of “serving the people.”
Society is divided into these two antagonistic groups. It must be
refounded by giving back full power to the people.8 Are these elements
sufficient to expect the repetition of 1933 and Adolf Hitler’s Machtergrei-
fung? Are the German and Austrian democracies in a defensive position
or can they still rely on a broad political and electoral consensus? Would
the resolution of the immigration issue kill these parties?
A New Actor: The Alternative for Germany (AfD)

The AfD is one of the youngest nativist parties in Europe. Its electoral
establishment within the German political system is strongly dominated
by German history and the experience of Nazism, the German reunifica-
tion of 1990, but also more contemporaneously (2015), the question of
immigration. Like the history of the FPÖ, the organizational and elec-
toral history of the AfD (2013–2019) has been frequently analyzed,9
6 Theodor Adorno, Etudes sur la personnalité autoritaire, Paris, Editions Allia, 2007.
7 Hannah Arendt, La nature du totalitarisme, Paris, Payot, 1990.
8 Cas Mudde, op. cit.; Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism, London, New York, Verso,
2018.
9 David Bebnowski, Die Alternative für Deutschland. Aufstieg und gesellschaftliche
Repräsentanz einer rechten populistischen Partei, Wiesbaden, Springer VS, 2015; Hajo
Funke, Von Wutbürgern und Brandstiftern: AfD - Pegida – Gewaltnetze, Berlin, vbb
(Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg), 2016; Alexander Häusler (ed.), Die Alternative für
Deutschland. Programmatik, Entwicklung und politische Verortung, Wiesbaden, Springer
Fachmedien, 2016; Marcel Lewandowsky, “Eine rechtspopulistische Protestpartei? Die AfD
in der öffentlichen und politikwissenschaftlichen Debatte”, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft
82 P. MOREAU
but rarely in a comparative manner.10 Another aspect has been largely

neglected. The AfD has learned tactical and strategic lessons from other
major national-populist parties like the National Front/National Rally
in France, the League in Italy, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands,
etc. These parties are also deeply rooted in the history of their nations.
In order to consolidate their electorates, they had to respond to the
same questions, challenges, and crises (Greek and Euro crisis, migra-
tion, Islamic threat, Brexit, Trump, Putin, etc.). More or less coherently,
all these parties propose a very similar xenophobic and illiberal social,
economic, and political model. Their electoral programs of the period
2016–2019 show this very clearly.11 Focusing on AfD and FPÖ, disre-
garding the latter’s 2019/2020 crisis, it is evident how much the AfD
has “learned” from the FPÖ.
The federal elections of 24 September 2017 prompted a genuine polit-
ical earthquake. Based on 12.6% of the vote and 94 out of 709 allocated
Bundestag seats, the nativist AfD became the country’s third strongest
political power. Founded in spring 2013, the party has always been inter-
nally divided into a strong anti-system wing, and another one, considered
more politically realist, and in search of possibilities for cooperation with
other parties, especially with the CDU/CSU. However, in no way had
this kept the AfD from making itself heard in an otherwise monotonous
campaign whose outcome had been considered clear, and where there had
been no substantive discussion between the big traditional parties.
The AfD took advantage of this situation and discussed the topics its
competitors had painstakingly avoided, namely, the future of the Euro-
pean Union, security, immigration, and the place of Islam in German
society. Among the voters, these topics struck a significant chord.
The AfD is not an ideological monolith. Instead, the party is divided
into four different political currents: the Christian fundamentalists who
are presently (in 2020) allies of the German national (national conserva-
tive) wing (led by Alexander Gauland, honorary chairman since December
(ZPol) Heft 1, Jahrgang 25, 2015, pp. 119–134, Nomos Elibrary, https://doi.org/10.
5771/1430-6387-2015-1; Patrick Moreau, Láutre Allemagne: Le réveil de léxtrême droite
allemande. Paris, Vendémiaires, 2017.
10 Stephan Grigat (ed.), AfD & FPÖ. Antisemitismus, völkischer Nationalismus und
Geschlechterbilder, Baden-Baden, Nomos-Verlag, 2017.
11 Jens Rydgren, The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2018.
2019), the national liberals who are also allies of the German nationals,
with Alice Weidel (co-chairperson of the AfD’s Bundestag faction) and
Jörg Meuthen (one of two chairpersons of the party), and finally the
völkisch nationals/identitarians led by Björn Höcke and organized within
the current Der Flügel. The latter wing is in a simmering conflict with
the other three currents. By contrast, there were no antagonistic wings
within the FPÖ until former chairman and vice chancellor Hans-Christian
Strache was expelled from the party in December 2019.
The AfD, especially the national conservatives, copied Strache’s
approach in order to de-demonize their party and make it an attractive
partner of a possible future coalition government in post-Merkel times.
New Right and Identitarian Movement

The growing acceptance of the FPÖ in Austria since 2005 and its 2017
electoral success are not only due to Strache’s communication skills. They
are also the result of systematic long-term efforts in the fields of commu-
nication and ideology. The idea is not new: to win the minds and hearts
(the bunkers, according to Gramsci) as well as cultural leadership in order
to take over power eventually. Right-wing Gramscism has a long history
since Alain de Benoist’s meta-political analysis GRECE in 1980.12 This
political heritage has been adopted and brought up to date by the German
and Austrian New Right and Identitarian movement.13
12 Anne-Marie Duranton-Crabol, Visages de la Nouvelle Droite. Le GRECE et son

histoire, Paris, Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1988; Pierre-André Taguieff,
Sur la Nouvelle Droite. Jalons d’une analyse critique, Descartes et Cie, Paris, Galilée, 1994.
13 Christian Fuchs, Paul Middelhoff, Das Netzwerk der Neuen Rechten. Wer sie
lenkt, wer sie finanziert und wie sie die Gesellschaft verändern, Berlin, rowohlt,
2019; Uwe Backes, Zum Weltbild der Neuer Rechten in Deutschland, Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung, Analysen und Argumenten, Nr. 321, Berlin, 2018, download-
able pdf: https://www.kas.de/de/analysen-und-argumente/detail/-/content/zum-wel
tbild-der-neuen-rechten-in-deutschland; Julian Bruns, Kathrin Glösel, Natascha Strobl, Die
Identitären: Handbuch zur Jugendbewegung der Neuen Rechten in Europa, Münster, 2016;
Bundesregierung, Verbindungen der extrem rechten “Identitären Bewegung” in Deutschland
und Österreich, Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten
Martina Renner, Dr. André Hahn, Gökay Akbulut, weiterer Abgeordneter und der Frak-
tion DIE LINKE, Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 19/3668, 2018, https://dipbt.bun
destag.de/doc/btd/19/039/1903913.pdf.
84 P. MOREAU
The French New Right and GRECE split over the question of a
rapprochement with the National Front.14 Alain de Benoist did not
believe in elections. Many of his supporters left him. In his isolation,
he continued his theoretical work. He published many books in French,
which were translated into German15 and found a wide echo in Germany
before long. Henning Eichberg,16 a scholar and friend of De Benoist’s,
popularized his theses in a 1978 book entitled National Identity, a theo-
retical reference for the German and Austrian Identitarian movement and
New Right to this day.17
According to Eichberg, national identity is neither left nor right, but
a revolutionary principle, namely, “nationalism of liberation.” “Healthy
peoples” need to find their true völkisch and national identity and fight
the “universalist ‘superpowers’.”18 The aim is to implement a “peoples’
order” based on the principles of ethno-nationalism. Rather than speaking
of a hierarchy of “races,” De Benoist and Eichberg emphasize their
“appreciation” of all cultures, provided, of course, people remain in their
place of birth or within their assigned cultural space—hence, the primacy
of the fight against immigration and “Überfremdung” (domination by
foreign influences and migrants, literally: over-foreignization). People are
determined solely by their belonging to a “collective body.” “Peoples”
are thought of as homogeneous groups and people are differentiated
primarily according to their ethnic or cultural affiliation. Referring to
Carl Schmitt, homogeneity, i.e., the uniformity of groups, is argued to
14 Jean-Yves Camus, “Le Front National et la nouvelle droite”, in Sylvain Crépon (ed.),
Les faux-semblants du Front national. Académique, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2015,
pp. 97–120.
15 Some of his most important works still quoted by the Identitarians and the New
German Right: Alain de Benoist, Kulturrevolution von rechts Dresden, Jungeuropa,
2017; Totalitarismus, Verlag Junge Freiheit, Berlin, 2001; Aufstand der Kulturen, Berlin,
Verlag Junge Freiheit, 2003; Schöne vernetzte Welt—Eine Antwort auf die Globalisierung,
Tübingen, Hohenrain, 2003; Kritik der Menschenrechte, Berlin, Verlag Junge Freiheit,
2004; Am Rande des Abgrunds. Eine Kritik der Herrschaft des Geldes, Berlin, Edition JF,
2012; Mein Leben, Wege eines Denkens, Berlin, Edition JF, 2014.
16 Benedikt Sepp, Linke Leute von rechts? Die nationalrevolutionäre Bewegung in der
Bundesrepublik, Marburg, Tectum, 2013.
17 Henning Eichberg, Nationale Identität. Entfremdung und nationale Frage in der
Industriegesellschaft, Munich, Langen-Müller, 1978.
18 Henning Eichberg, op.cit., 113 ff.
be necessary for “true” democracy. According to De Benoist’s thesis,

different people are only able to agree to a very limited extent.19
Eichberg’s theses inspired several journals and national-revolutionary
groups, which were unable to develop and grow.20 The Thule Seminar,
founded in 1980,21 a copy of GRECE headed by Pierre Krebs, failed
in its project of cultural subversion. For the future of the New Right, the
journal Criticon was to be much more important. It was founded in 1970
by Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing as a vote dissenting from the 68 cultural
revolution, and a mouthpiece of the intellectual right. Its political stance
was national-conservative, but in its columns, it gave ample space to De
Benoist and Eichberg.22 Two other authors are worth mentioning: Armin
Mohler (1920–2003), a Swiss publicist, writer, and journalist, known for
his work on the “Conservative Revolution,”23 and his secretary Karlheinz
Weißmann, one of the master thinkers of the German New Right in 2020.
The topic of the Conservative Revolution and the “re-founding of
conservatism” is the battle horse of Alexander Gauland, but also of the
German and Austrian Identitarians and New Right. This is a collective
term for several intellectual currents which, during the Weimar Republic,
advocated allegedly lost values: “elite, leadership, God, nation, nature,
order, race, and ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ (literally: folk community).”24 Edgar
Julius Jung, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Niekisch, and Carl Schmitt are
considered the key pioneering thinkers. The fact that most of these
revolutionary conservatives were opponents and sometimes victims of
the Hitler regime enables Gauland to distance himself from National
Socialism. The Conservative Revolution is presented as the ideolog-
ical ancestor of “value-conservatism of the twenty-first century.” In
19 Alain de Benoist, Carl Schmitt, Bibliografie seiner Schriften und Korrespondenzen,

Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2003; Carl Schmitt und der Krieg, Berlin, Edition JF, 2007.
20 Patrick Moreau, Les Héritiers…, op. cit., 239–257.
21 Friedrich Paul Heller, Anton Maegerle, Thule. Vom völkischen Okkultismus bis zur
Neuen Rechten, Stuttgart, Schmetterling-Verlag, 1998.
22 Friedemann Schmidt, Die Neue Rechte und die Berliner Republik, Opladen, Springer,
2001.
23 Armin Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932, Ein Hand-
buch. Graz, Ares, 2005.
24 Armin Pfahl-Traughber, Was die Neue Rechte ist—und was nicht, https://www.bpb.
de/politik/extremismus/rechtsextremismus/284268/was-die-neue-rechte-ist-und-was-
nicht. Accessed January 2, 2020.
86 P. MOREAU
2017, Alexander Gauland defined the term in a speech to the German

Bundestag: “Conservatism is not a firmly defined, precisely identified, and
long concluded phenomenon of social and intellectual history, but a vital
necessity for a well-balanced social development that respects the humane.
To be conservative is not to cling to yesterday, but to live according to
what is eternally valid.”25
This definition corresponds with that of the weekly Junge Freiheit, the
germ cell of the New Right of the 1990s. In 2020, it still is the prin-
cipal forum for disseminating ideas of this current and value-conservative
theses.26 JF wants to establish communication between and bring
together conservative CDU/CSU members opposed to Merkel’s policies
(especially the WerteUnion current27 ), the AfD value-conservatives, and,
until 2016, leaders of the New Right, like Götz Kubitschek.28
Dieter Stein, the editor of the journal, founded Junge Freiheit in May
1986. Since 1994, JF is published as a weekly journal of 20–28 pages. In
2019, JF sold 35,000 copies per week. Its circulation has been steadily
increasing. It has a good quality website, publishes newsletters, and runs
an online bookstore. The list of authors and contributors of the weekly
shows that JF has succeeded in becoming a true contact zone between
democratic conservatism and neoconservatives. Officially, JF is on the
25 Wissenschaftliche Dienste, Deutscher Bundestag, Zum Begriff, “konservativ”,

https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/533258/458e809c534396a83a2a838f572
3e62c/wd-1-019-17-pdf-data.pdf. Accessed January 19, 2020; Alexander Gauland, Was
ist Konservativismus? Streitschrift gegen die falschen deutschen Traditionen, Frankfurt am
Main, Eichborn Verlag, 1991, p. 59; Alexander Gauland, Anleitung zum Konservativsein:
Zur Geschichte eines Wortes, Lüdinghausen, Landt Verlag, 2017.
26 Martin Dietzsch, Siegfried Jäger, Helmut Kellershohn, Alfred Schobert, Nation statt
Demokratie: Sein und Design der “Jungen Freiheit”, Edition DISS, Bd. 4, Münster, Unrast,
2004; Stefan Kubon, Die bundesdeutsche Zeitung “Junge Freiheit” und das Erbe der “Kon-
servativen Revolution” der Weimarer Republik. Eine Untersuchung zur Erfassung der
Kontinuität “konservativ-revolutionärer” politischer Ideen, Spektrum Politikwissenschaft,
Band 35, Ergon Würzburg, 2006; Klaus Kornexl, Das Weltbild der Intellektuellen Rechten
in der Bundesrepublik. Deutschland. Dargestellt am Beispiel der Wochenzeitschrift Junge
Freiheit, Beiträge zur Politikwissenschaft, Bd. 9, Munich, Herbert Utz Verlag, 2008.
27 https://werteunion.net/. Accessed January 19, 2020.
28 Götz Kubitschek, 20 Jahre Junge Freiheit—Idee und Geschichte einer Zeitung.
Schnellroda, Edition Antaios, 2006. For Junge Freiheit, Alain de Benoist remains a
master-thinker. Cf.: Karlheinz Weißmann, Denker und Sammler. Alain de Benoist zum
75. Geburtstag, December 11, 2018, https://jungefreiheit.de/kultur/2018/der-herr-der-
baende/. Accessed January 19, 2020.
AfD’s periphery, but it is one of the party’s most active supporters. Dieter
Stein is convinced that the only viable strategy is the cooperation between
a post-Merkel CDU and a “normalized” AfD. This is why, in 2016, he
decided to support the Gauland wing in its conflict with the national
völkisch current.29 The axes of its recent publication include the CDU’s
“shift to the left,” but also climate skepticism and the denunciation of
Greta Thunberg, a common topic of both AfD and FPÖ.
Since 2000, the German New Right has grown. The foundation
of the AfD accelerated this process. Today there are many magazines,
websites, and blogs: The magazine “Eigentümlich frei” (circulation
8000), the right-wing conservative and right-wing populist magazine
“Cato - Magazin für neue Sachlichkeit,” first published in September
2017 (first printing 50,000 copies), and very close to the AfD as
proven by its authors Karlheinz Weißmann, Nicolaus Fest, and Michael
Klonovsky, and the youth magazine “Arcadi,” the “new culture and
lifestyle magazine” close to the Identitarian movement (circulation 1000).
“Compact-Magazin” has a circulation of 75,000 copies per month.
It is directed by the publicist and former communist Jürgen Elsässer.30
In October 2019, the website compact-online had 1 million visits. On
Facebook, the magazine has almost 100,000 followers. By now, Compact
has become an opinion-former of the German nativist sphere on the
internet. Besides Jürgen Elsässer, Götz Kubitschek is currently the second
important media figure of the right-wing sphere. He publishes only one
magazine, “Sezession” (circulation 3000). On the Internet, sezession.de
had about 350,000 visits in February 2018. Kubitschek also runs the
“Institute for State Politics,”31 a meeting point of the “advocates of the
intellectualization” of the right. His “Antaios” publishing house does not
only publish theoretical texts like those of Armin Mohler or Gauland,
but Kubitschek is present at book fairs, for example, in Frankfurt.32
29 Christian Vollradt, Gauland—“Wir müssen realistisch bleiben”, https://jungef

reiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2019/gauland-wir-muessen-realistisch-bleiben/. Accessed
January 19, 2020.
30 https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/juergen-elsaesser-der-chefideologe-der-neuen-rec
hten-a-1187601.html. Accessed January 19, 2020.
31 Founded by Götz Kubitschek and Karlheinz Weißmann in May 2000. The latter
broke with Kubitschek because auf his political radicalism.
32 https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/frankfurter-buchmesse-rechter-verlag-antaios-
doch-auf-der-messe/23176542.html. Accessed January 19, 2020.
88 P. MOREAU
Finally, Jürgen Elsässer, AfD officials, und fraternity members estab-

lished the crowdfunding-organization “Ein Prozent für Deutschland”
(one percent for Germany) which supports various projects and organi-
zations, including the Identitarian movement. All these magazines and
websites support the AfD. The magazine Cato is close to the Gauland
line, but the majority of them backs Björn Höcke’s wing Der Flügel.
Höcke multiplied the references to the theses of the German New Right
in his book published in 2018.33
The Austrian New Right is based on the same ideological foundations
as its German counterpart. Its first political stances were published in
the monthly magazine Die Aula of the FPÖ’s Association of Academics
(Freiheitliche Akademikerverbände der FPÖ), but above all in the maga-
zine Zur Zeit, founded in 1997. The New Right is led by one of the
few FPÖ intellectuals, Andreas Mölzer, who published numerous works
combining German nationalism (cf. below, FPÖ) and the New Right’s
ethno-pluralism.34 Chairman of the Freedom Party Academy from 1991–
1995, he was one of Haider’s advisers and “his hack.” In two books,
Haider used the concepts of the French and German New Right to
explain his political project. After Haider split off of the FPÖ, Mölzer
broke with him, and from 2005, became a close advisor to Hans-Christian
Strache. A member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2014,
he brought together the national-populist parties in Europe, and later
became one of the key contact persons with the AfD. In 2020, he broke
with Strache. Mölzer is a man of influence, but also an ideologist, in the
FPÖ led by Norbert Hofer.
The Identitarian Movement

The Identitarian Movement is a different political current from the New
Right, but until 2019, both currents collaborated closely. The Identitarian
Movement has managed to establish itself within both AfD and FPÖ.
The origins of the “Identitarian Movement” are French. In France, the
so-called “Génération Identitaire” was founded as the youth organization
33 Sebastian Hennig, Björn Höcke, Nie zweimal in denselben Fluß: Björn Höcke
im Gespräch mit Sebastian Hennig, Lüdinghausen, Manuscriptum Verlagsbuchhandlung
Thomas Hoof e.K, 2018.
34 Mölzer’s CV, https://www.parlament.gv.at/WWER/PAD_01225/index.shtml.
Accessed January 19, 2020.
of the electoral party Bloc Identitaire in 2012. In Austria, there has been
an offshoot since 2013, and in Germany since 2014.35
The logo of the “Identitarian Movement” is the Greek letter Lambda,
set in a circle, yellow on a black background. The letter adorned the
shields of the Spartan army in the fight against the Persian Empire
and identified them as Spartans, as Lakedaimonians. The message is
clear: Identitarians consider themselves a military and spiritual elite. Their
declared objectives are the “defense of Europe” (against the predomi-
nantly Muslim “mass immigration”), making a “healthy patriotism” the
basis of politics, and the fight against the alleged “great exchange.”
Ethno-pluralism is at the heart of their propaganda, and the Conservative
Revolution their theoretical model.36
The Identitarians are distinguished by four characteristics: youthful-
ness, actionism, pop culture, and a “corporate identity.”37 They are an
elitist group with a hierarchical structure. In 2018, they counted 600
members in Germany (in February 2019, the AfD had 33,651 members),
many of whom were members of the AfD youth organization Junge
Alternative (1,655 members in January 2019). In Austria, 600 “activists”
are also assumed—even though it is not clear whether all of them
are members of an association of the Identitarians (In 2017, the FPÖ
had 60,000 members).38 Around this militant core—mainly young men
between 15 and 35 years of age—there is a large fringe of supporters who
are AfD or FPÖ members. Furthermore, there are groups in the Czech
35 Cf.: Julian Bruns, Kathrin Glösel, Natascha Strobl, Popularisierter Rechtsextremismus.

Die Identitäten in Deutschland, Düsseldorf, IDA e.V., Vielfalt Mediathek, https://www.
vielfalt-mediathek.de/media/expertise_identitren_vm_brunsglo776selstrobl.pdf. Accessed
January 19, 2020.
36 Jonas Fedders, Die hippen Erben der “Konservativen Revolution”, https://gegner
analyse.de/identitaere-in-halle-die-hippen-erben-der-konservativen-revolution/. Accessed
January 19, 2020; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes: Identitäre
Bewegung Österreich (IBÖ), https://www.doew.at/erkennen/rechtsextremismus/rec
htsextreme-organisationen/identitaere-bewegung-oesterreich-iboe. Accessed January 19,
2020.
37 https://www.bpb.de/politik/extremismus/rechtsextremismus/241438/die-identitae
ren-mehr-als-nur-ein-internet-phaenomen. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://forschung
sjournal.de/sites/default/files/fjsbplus/fjsb-plus_2014-3_hentges_koekgiran_nottbohm_
x.pdf. Accessed January 19, 2020.
38 https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/oesterreich/2004030-Mehr-als-
600-Identitaere-in-Oesterreich.html. Accessed January 19, 2020.
90 P. MOREAU
Republic, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, and Slovenia, which call them-
selves “Identitarian.” In Italy, there is also Casa Pound, a neo-fascist and
neo-right-wing organization active since 2003.
In 2020, most of the members of the Identitarian movement do not
have a political past. However, at the head of the Identitarians, there are
individuals who were active members of the neo-Nazi scene in Germany
and Austria.39 Until 2011, Martin Sellner, spokesman of the Identitar-
ians in Austria and unofficial leader of the German Identitarians, was
active in the neo-Nazi scene and in the environment of Gottfried Küssel,
a convicted neo-Nazi leader.40 Sellner is active throughout Europe and
maintains close contact with the League and the National Front/National
Rally which has several former Identitarians in its ranks.41
Actionism is at the forefront of political action. Transnational
campaigns are being conducted, for example against the “great
exchange.” Materials are translated into several languages and distributed
in different countries. The Identitarians organize rallies, too: for demon-
strations in Vienna and Berlin, they also mobilized in France, Italy,
and the Czech Republic. In summer 2017, the Identitarian Movement
chartered a ship under the slogan “Defend Europe.” The aim was
to intimidate NGOs and prevent refugees from crossing the Mediter-
ranean to reach Europe. German and Austrian Identitarians were heavily
involved. Finally, ideological trainings have been offered. At “summer
universities” in France, but also at “academies” at Götz Kubitschek’s
estate, Identitarians from different countries meet. They also practice
martial arts.
The phenomenon of the Identitarian Movement is characterized by the
“very effective use of Web 2.0 and social media”: Identitarians use text
and video blogs, music videos, Twitter channels, and social networks like
Instagram and Facebook “to draw attention to their ideological positions,
39 One of the cadre members is Tony Gerber from Saxony. He has a neo-Nazi past and
was a NPD candidate for parliament. Another one is Daniel Fiß, head of the German Iden-
titarians. Until 2011, was a member of the Kameradschaft Nationale Sozialisten Rostock
(brotherhood of National Socialists Rostock) and the NPD youth organization.
40 https://www.zeit.de/campus/2017/05/rechtradikalismus-martin-sellner-instagram.
Accessed January 19, 2020.
41 But the head of the Identitarians is also in contact with the “alt-right” of the USA.
He is married with the US author and Youtuber Brittany Pettibone who is considered a
promoter of the American “New Right.”
to disseminate existing content of right-wing conservative to conspiracy

theoretical magazines, to mobilize for their own events and to engage in
self-estheticization.” Platforms were created for various interests: group
blogs contain reviews of books and films, campaign texts, press releases,
and other videos on political positions, etc. “The reciprocal reference to
groups in other countries serves to demonstrate international networking.
The content is designed so that it can be disseminated even if users do not
understand the language used. The aim is to influence political debates
and to shape terms and images as well as to emotionalize.”42
In Austria, the Identitarian movement used the “Hackher-Zentrum” in
Graz, owned by to the FPÖ councilman Heinrich Sickl, and the “Kheven-
hüler Zentrum” in Linz.43 The address of this cellar club is the same as
that of the German national Burschenschaft Arminia Czernowitz. Many
FPÖ cadres and regional representatives are members of this fraternity.
In Halle, Germany, until December 2019, the movement had a “Haus
der Identitären Bewegung” which also hosted the office of Hans-Thomas
Tillschneider, AfD, member of the State Diet of Saxony-Anhalt.
The financing of the Identitarians is partially known. In Germany
as well as in France, they are registered associations and members pay
dues. They opened several donation accounts. To raise money for the
development of their own smartphone apps and for campaigns, Iden-
titarians used their own crowdfunding platforms (180,000 Euros for
the armament of the ship of the “Defend Europe”-campaign).44 The
German and Austrian Identitarians have been supported by the structure
“Einprozent.de,” which brings together AfD members and several jour-
nals of the German New Right. Furthermore, in Austria, Germany, and
France, Identitarians set up an online mail order business for T-shirts,
polo shirts, books, and other merchandise.
42 https://www.bpb.de/politik/extremismus/rechtsextremismus/241438/die-identitae
ren-mehr-als-nur-ein-internet-phaenomen. Accessed January 19, 2020. Cf. also: https://
www.hass-im-netz.info/fileadmin/user_upload/hass_im_netz/documents/Lagebericht_
Rechtsextremismus_im_Netz_2017.pdf. Accessed January 19, 2020.
43 https://www.identitaere-bewegung.at/tag/khevenhueller-zentrum/. Accessed
January 19, 2020.
44 https://www.vice.com/de/article/vbbgka/wie-kopfgeldjager-das-schiff-der-rechtsext
remen-identitaren-bewegung-finanzieren. Accessed January 19, 2020.
https://www.bento.de/politik/identitaere-bewegung-wie-finanzieren-sich-die-rechts
extremen-in-deutschland-a-a29e256c-78cc-4643-902f-9248efa6e59c. Accessed January
19, 2020.
92 P. MOREAU
The Identitarian movement has succeeded in its entrism operation

within both FPÖ and AfD, with the support of Hans-Christian Strache
and former Minister of the Interior Kickl45 as well as Gauland and Björn
Höcke.46 In Austria, the Identitarians are close to or members of the
German national student corporations (cf. FPÖ) and frequently members
of the FPÖ’s student organization, Ring Freiheitlicher Studenten. For the
AfD, it is a question of compensating for the lack of human resources. The
party finds it extremely difficult to recruit academics in general, let alone
those who are also trained in the use of social networks. But almost
all German Identitarians are university students or graduates. Therefore,
since 2017, they have found their career opportunities in the AfD, be
it as employees of the AfD Bundestag faction or of the state parliament
factions.47
In Germany, in 2016, the Federal Office for the Protection of the
Constitution announced its intention to monitor the Identitarian move-
ment as well as the AfD’s youth organization Junge Alternative. Prior
to this, some federal state offices for the protection of the constitu-
tion had already been observing the respective groups (for example, in
Lower Saxony since 2014). In Austria, the Office for the Protection of
the Constitution has been monitoring the Identitarians since 2012. But
the German and Austrian general public only took notice of this political
current in 2019. 50 Muslims were murdered in a right-wing extremist
attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019. The assassin
had previously written a “manifesto.” Its analysis shows strong ideolog-
ical and conceptual similarities with the Identitarians. Two weeks after
the attack, it transpired that the perpetrator had donated 1500 euros to
Martin Sellner. Sellner’s house was searched and investigators are looking
into suspected involvement in a terrorist organization. In e-mails, the
assassin confessed to being a fan of Sellner’s. In May 2019, it became
45 https://apps.derstandard.de/privacywall/story/2000108936379/kickls-kabinetts
chef-hatte-intensiven-kontakt-mit-identitaeren-chef. Accessed January 19, 2020; https://
apps.derstandard.at/privacywall/story/2000107484128/kickl-spricht-sich-strikt-gegen-ide
ntitaeren-verbot-aus. Accessed January 19, 2020.
46 https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/kontakte-zwischen-afd-und-identitaerer-
bewegung-15821535.html. Accessed January 19, 2020.
47 https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-04/rechtsextremismus-identitaere-
bewegung-afd-daniel-fiss-bundestag. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://www.zeit.de/
politik/deutschland/2017-06/afd-identitaere-bewegung-unvereinbarkeitsbeschluss-funkti
onaere/seite-3. Accessed January 19, 2020.
known that Sellner and the assassin had corresponded and invited each
other to Vienna and Australia.
Because of this scandal, Chancellor Kurz demanded that Strache break
with the Identitarians.48 Strache refused, just like the current FPÖ under
Norbert Hofer.49 At its December 2019 national convention, the AfD
strenuously avoided debating the subject because there are still many
Identitarians among its cadres.
The War of Words

The “war of words” comprises, besides the elaboration of an ideological
corpus for intellectuals, the creation of a discourse that makes it impos-
sible to attack the FPÖ’s and the AfD’s political objectives as “right-wing
extremist,” to open both parties to all voters, and to make them accept-
able to traditionally hostile social segments (women, persons over 60 years
of age, civil servants, and university graduates). Both parties face major
deficits in these electoral groups.
This battle is conducted with two mutually reinforcing strategic
approaches. The FPÖ handles social media like Facebook and others
to perfection—which holds true for the AfD, too—and uses “negative
campaigning ”50 just like the other nativist parties.
But it goes beyond that: the FPÖ has often attempted to destroy
and reverse the meaning of words. The best example is the term
“Gutmensch” (literally: good person), originally a left-wing ideologeme.
During the migration crisis, it was a symbolic term describing members
of social groups supporting the refugees. Within two years (2015–2017),
following systematic criticism of the term on Facebook and in letters
from readers to editors, the term took on the meaning of “do-gooder”
and became more or less the equivalent of “simpleton.” Thus, mobiliza-
tion on behalf of refugees takes on a negative connotation, a “stupid
movement led by idiots” and therefore “dangerous.” The same tech-
nique can be observed for other terms, for example economic refugees,
48 https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/kanzler-kurz-besteht-auf-abgren
zung-der-fpoe-zu-identitaeren,RMh0ly9. Accessed January 19, 2020.
49 https://kurier.at/politik/inland/fpoe-reform-chef-nicht-alle-identitaere-sind-rechts
extrem/400708809. Accessed January 19, 2020.
50 https://derstandard.at/2000040978760/Alle-Parteien-betreiben-Negative-Campai
gning. Accessed January 19, 2020.
94 P. MOREAU
asylum industry, the naive and gullible advocates of the welcome ideology,
or the term enrichers of the culture. The AfD has used this approach on its
sites, as well as on Facebook which is an important element of the party’s
communication strategy. The semantic borrowings from the FPÖ are so
systematic that we can speak of “copy and paste.”
Both parties claim to represent and stand for Enlightenment, grass-
roots democracy, women’s rights, a social and economic policy “serving
the people,” national preference, Heimat, and ethno-plural “anti-racism.”
Beyond this war of words, Strache used a new language for
his party. Depending on the four party tendencies (Christian funda-
mentalism, German nationalism,51 national liberalism, völkisch nation-
alism/identitarianism), the AfD has more or less completely adopted this
language. This semantic acquisition is all the easier since German is their
common language and the past of the two nations is closely intertwined
(Table 5.1).
Table 5.1 shows that (with the exception of the völkisch nationalist
wing) the 2020 AfD discourse is hard to tackle globally because of the
national-socialist experience. Based on the German constitutional princi-
ples, the AfD’s classification as an extremist party is very difficult. This
holds all the more true for the FPÖ which is perfectly integrated into
the Austrian political system. Certainly, the FPÖ and AfD programs are
xenophobic and, in the overall analysis, authoritarian. This explains the
difficulties of German democrats in “dismantling” this party and helps
us understand why in 2020, the “Federal Office for the Protection of
the Constitution” (the internal secret service in Germany) observes only
segments of the Höcke wing and individuals close to the Identitarian
Movement.
The AfD’s electoral success is also a result of the party’s ability to adapt
its program in line with the development of the voters’ discontent and
especially their fears. On 96 pages, the 2016 program, still valid in 2020,
demonstrates that the AfD is not a single-issue party, and that it offers
the voters a clear ideological orientation. In this sense, it certainly is a
protest party, but it is also an “anti-system party” and a machine built for
an ideological war. This is true for the 2011 program of the FPÖ, too,
which is also still up-to-date.52
51 This is the tendency Gauland calls “value-conservative.”

52 https://www.fpoe.at/test/parteiprogramm/. Accessed January 19, 2020.
Table 5.1 Right-Wing Extremism (NPD) opposed to the AfD Wings (Christian fundamentalism—CF, German
nationalism—GN, national liberalism NL, völkisch nationalism/Identitarianism—NV)
Right-Wing Extremism—NPD FPÖ and AfD Wings
Positive perception of historical fascisms, revisionism, negationism FPÖ, NV:

historical revisionism
Open rejection of democracy, FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
denunciation of the blockage of democracy Defense of the principles of “direct democracy”; limitation of
the power of parties, trade unions, and lobby groups
5
Call for the destruction of the system; FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
call for the construction of a “völkisch” democracy; Transformation of democracy by introducing new benchmarks
hostility to European Union; and legislative principles; new constitution, presidential regime
rejection of EU enlargement FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Hostility to European Union and European Commission.
Approval of extension of the power of the European
Parliament. Seeking alliance with all nationalist, nativist, and
sovereigntist formations
FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Rejection of EU enlargement and Turkey’s accession to the EU
Völkisch racism, anti-Semitism, ethno-centrism, discrimination of FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
minorities, rejection of the principle of social equality; Official abandonment of anti-Semitism
social, economic, and political authoritarianism, hypertrophic CF, NV, Gauland:
security policy Anti-Zionism
Discrimination of migrants and limitation of their rights
FPÖ, CF, GN, NV:
Economic interventionism, but within a liberal framework
strict security policy
AFD AND FPÖ: REJECTION OF IMMIGRATION …
(continued)
95
96
Table 5.1 (continued)
Designated enemies: Jews, freemasons, left-wingers, USA, EU; FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
rejection of immigration Designated enemies: fundamentalist Muslims, Romani people,
P. MOREAU
multiculturalism, hegemony of the “left” (political correctness ),

bureaucracy, European Union
Rejection of third world immigration
FPÖ, NL:
Open to qualified or European immigration
FPÖ, CF, GN, NV:
Partial adoption of the replacement theory (Great Replacement)
Economy: Condemnation of stateless capitalism, Jewish and US FPÖ, CF, GN, NV, NL:
banks; Economy: Liberal capitalism under surveillance
national preference and/or autarky GN, NV:
regulatory interventionism, gain-sharing of workers, critique of
globalization
FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV: National preference
Hostility to Unions FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Preservation of the social gains of the years 1950–2010,
hostility to left-wing unions
Anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, pro-Palestinian, FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
in part pro-Arab Anti-Americanism (Trump is a controversial figure)
Fight against Islamism, Islam “does not belong to Austria/to
Germany”
FPÖ (until December 2019), CF, GN, NL, NV:
pro-Putin policy
White race, nation, Europe of peoples FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Tradition, culture, region, Heimat, nation, patriotism, Europe
of nations
Acceptance of violence FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:

Rejection of violence
Gender inequality: “3 K” for women: Kinder (children)—Küche FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
(kitchen)—Kirche (church) Presence of women on all levels of society
CF, NA, NL, NV:
Disappearance of gender inequalities
Have children FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Positive demography
5
Lack of an ecological discourse FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:

Ecology presented as the foundation for well-being of the
populations and the preservation of the Heimat.
Climato-skepticism
Protection of families FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Protection of families and of the elderly
Homophobia and moral order FPÖ, GN, NL:
No gender bias
CF, NV:
Discrimination of homosexuals
Denunciation of the culture of decadence FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Refoundation of a patriotic culture enrooted in the
German/Austrian history
Pagan religions, coexistence of fundamentalist Catholicism or FPÖ, CF, GN, NL, NV:
Protestantism and agnosticism coexistence of fundamentalist Catholicism or Protestantism and
agnosticism
Source The author

AFD AND FPÖ: REJECTION OF IMMIGRATION …
97
98 P. MOREAU
There are hardly any differences between the programs of the two
parties. The central focus is on patriotism, Heimat, identity, security, and
the fight against immigration and the political Islam.
THE AfD PROGRAM 2016/2020 Compared with the 2011–2020 FPÖ Program
Political system (AFD/FPÖ) Reestablishment of

democracy in the face of the present
political oligarchy
(AfD) Limitation of the terms of office of
the Chancellor to two legislative periods
(AfD/FPÖ) Multiplication of referenda
based on the Swiss model
(AfD/FPÖ) Reduction of the influence
of lobbies
Economy (AfD/FPÖ) Simplification of taxation
(flat tax) for low-income families
(AfD/FPÖ) Rejection of the maximum
tax rate of the richest members of society
(AfD) Addition of an article to the Basic
Law enforcing the limitation of
expenditure and taxes (unspecified) in
order to restrain the power of the state
(AfD/FPÖ) Support of families and of
the resurgence of the birth rate
Immigration (AfD/FPÖ) Drastic stop of the arrival of
new refugees, call for “negative”
immigration (forced departure of
migrants already living in the country)
(AfD/FPÖ) Closure of borders,
reinforcement of border police
(AfD/FPÖ) Abolition of the right of
asylum
(AfD/FPÖ) Amendment of the Basic
Law/Constitution to enable the
deprivation of citizenship
Internal Security (AfD/FPÖ) Reform and reinforcement
of the police
(AfD/FPÖ) Fight against transnational
organized crime
(AfD/FPÖ) Fight against petty crime
(AfD/FPÖ) Revision of juvenile criminal
law
(AfD/FPÖ) Transformation of border
posts into detention centers
(continued)
(continued)
Religion (AfD/FPÖ) Ban on minarets, the

muezzin’s call for prayer, and the full
veil: Islam “does not belong to
Germany/Austria.”
(AfD/FPÖ) Prohibition of the Jewish or
Muslim ritual slaughter
(AfD/FPÖ) Withdrawal of the status of
a statutory body under public law from
Muslim organizations
Europe (AfD/FPÖ) Retransfer of competences
from the EU to the sovereign states
(AfD/FPÖ) Medium-term replacement
of the Euro by the Deutsche
Mark/Schilling
(AfD/FPÖ) Rejection of Turkey’s
accession to the EU
International (AfD) Withdrawal of foreign troops and
nuclear weapons from Germany
(AfD) Reintroduction of compulsory
military service
(AfD/FPÖ until Dec. 2019) Enhanced
cooperation with Vladimir Putin and
lifting of the economic sanctions against
Russia
Values (AfD/FPÖ) Redefinition of the term
“people,” and the establishment of a
“dominant culture” obligatory for every
resident
(AfD/FPÖ) Replacement of ius soli by
ius sanguinis
(AfD/FPÖ) Mandatory national
preference as principle of economic and
social reference, “Germans/Austrian first”
(AfD/FPÖ) Defense of the German
language
(AfD/FPÖ) Fight against acculturation
(AfD/FPÖ) Preservation of the Heimat
(AfD/FPÖ) Consideration of the policy
of equality of men and women as “fake
feminism”
(AfD/FPÖ) Culture of German
remembrance, expanding of the historical
perspectives in the light of contents with
a positive national self-conception and
identity
(continued)
100 P. MOREAU
(continued)
Environment (AfD/FPÖ) Fight against the dictates of

“global warming prophets”
(AfD/FPÖ) Cancelation of the Paris
climate agreement
(AfD/FPÖ) Objection to the
abandonment of nuclear power
(AfD/FPÖ) Repealing of the law on
renewable energies and stop of subsidies
of bio-energy
Source The author
Still, in 2019, the AfD and FPÖ programs developed in response

to the emerging ecological protest. The AfD rejects the Grand Coali-
tion’s decisions on the climate.53 An opposition party since 2019, the
FPÖ campaigns against the turquoise-green government and the climate
measurements planned for the coming years. FPÖ and AfD defend diesel
engines and the automobile industry endangered by the “Greta effect.”
The Breakthrough of the AfD at the Bundestag

Elections of September 24, 2017
The sociological bases of FPÖ and AfD are clear: a strong position among
the less than 30-year-old voters, overrepresentation of men, workers,
jobless, and low educational levels. We speak about neo-proletarian
parties.54 The influence of the level of education on the electoral choice
is also clear: the higher the level of education, the lesser the vote of FPÖ
and AfD. Besides these indicators, their electorates differ. The FPÖ has
a core electorate of around 15–20%, i.e., people who have voted for this
party since the 1980s. In this respect, the AfD is very different, as shown
by the Bundestag elections of 24 September 2017.
This election confirmed the weakening of the traditional parties CDU,
CSU, and SPD, continuing a long-term trend. In 1987, CDU/CSU and
53 https://www.zeit.de/politik/2019-09/koalitionsausschuss-klimaschutz-klimakabi
nett-klimapolitik-co2-steuer. Accessed January 19, 2020.
54 Patrick Moreau, Alternative für Deutschland: De la Création en 2013, aux élections
régionales de Hesse d’Octobre 2018, https://www.fondapol.org/etude/alternative-fur-deu
tschland-etablissement-electoral/. Accessed January 19, 2020.
SPD had collected 81% of the vote, in 1990 77%, in 2005 69.4%, in 2009
56.8%, in 2013 67.2%, and in 2017 53.5%. This is a result of the crisis of
the traditional social-democratic and conservative milieus.55 The present
fragmentation of the political system (six parties hold Bundestag seats)
complicates the establishment of stable majorities.
In 2017, the Union (CDU plus CSU) scored its worst result since
1949 (32.9%, − 8.6% compared to 2013) and the SPD of its post-war
political history (20.5%, − 5.2%). The Greens (8.9%, + 0.5%) and Die
Linke (the Left) (9.2%, + 0.6%) remained more or less stable, the big
winners of the consultation being the Liberals of the FDP (10.7%, +
6.0%), and the national populist AfD (12.6%, + 7.9%). The party disposed
of 94 elected Bundestag MPs (90 as of December 18, 2019), including
three direct mandates (all in Saxony).
The AfD enjoyed an exceptional breakthrough in the new
Bundesländer (30%, + 16%). In the West, however, the party obtained
only 10.7% (+6%). The increased voter turnout in both East and West
was a gain-factor for the AfD. In 2013, the voter turnout had been 71%.
It rose to 76% in the 2017 elections. For this reason, the party claims to
be “an actor in the renewal of German democracy,”, making many voters
return to politics who intend to make the AfD its political representation.
In Saxony, the AfD even became the strongest regional party (27%),
narrowly defeating the CDU (26.9%). Then AfD chairwoman Frauke
Petry, who resigned and left the party after the election, reached 37.4% of
the vote, the AfD’s highest score in Germany. The Land Berlin continued
to resist the AfD (12%). In Brandenburg, the party reached 20.2%, in
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 18.6%, and in Saxony-Anhalt 19.6%. It
received its lowest score in Hamburg (7.8%), with Schleswig–Holstein
(8.2%) and Rhineland-Westphalia (9.4%) also being areas of resistance
to the AfD. Its breakthrough in Bavaria (12.2%) resulted in a dramatic
weakening of the CSU (38.8%, down − 10.5% from 49.3% in 2013).
55 Winfried Thaa, “Die Krise politischer Repräsentation—eine Folge der Auflö-

sung gesellschaftlicher Großgruppen und sozio-kultureller Milieus?”, in Markus Linden,
Winfried Thaa (eds.), Krise und Reform politischer Repräsentation, Baden-Baden, Nomos,
2011, pp. 124–147; Peter Lösche, Ende der Volksparteien. Sozialwissenschaftlicher Fach-
informationsdienst soFid, Politische Soziologie 2010/1, pp 9–16. https://nbn-resolving.
org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-206074. Accessed January 19, 2020; Max Reinhardt, Aufstieg
und Krise der SPD. Flügel und Repräsentanten einer pluralistischen Volkspartei, https://
www.nomos-shop.de/_assets/downloads/9783832965754_lese01.pdf. Accessed January
19, 2020.
102 P. MOREAU
The electoral transfers show the CDU/CSU’s heavy losses benefitting

all competing parties, but especially AfD and FDP. The AfD wins over
voters from all parties, including almost one million from the CDU/CSU
(25%), but also 400,000 from Die Linke (10%) and 470,000 from the
SPD (12%), 40 000 from the Greens, and 10 000 from the FDP. But the
main influx came from 2013 abstainers who returned to the ballot boxes
(1.2 million, 31%). The party also benefits from the weakening of the
“various” parties of 2013, like Pirate Party or NDP. Alexander Gauland’s
efforts to attract national-conservative voters disappointed by Merkel’s
policy were highly successful.56
In 2017, the sociography of AfD voters shows a high continuity with
the 2015–2017 regional elections. The AfD is preferred by men (15%)
more than women (9%). Furthermore, the higher the educational level,
the lower the AfD vote. Among voters with a low educational level,
the AfD obtains 14%, with a medium level 17%, among those with a
high school diploma (Abitur) 10%, and only 7% of the vote of university
students and graduates.57
The breakdown by age groups reveals that the AfD reaches its highest
scores among 25–59-year-old voters. Compared to 2013, the party makes
the greatest progress among the 25–34-year olds (14%, + 8 points).
Among the 35–44-year olds it advances 10 points to 16%, in the age
group 45–59 years, it progresses + 9 points to 14%. The younger voters
(18–24 years: 10% + 4 points compared to 2013) and those over 60 years
tend to refrain from voting AfD (60–69 years: 12% + 8 points; 70 years
and older: 7%, + 5 points).58
The breakthrough of the AfD among 25–59-year olds may be assumed
to have an economic dimension (unemployment, fear of deterioration of
the personal situation, perception of immigration as a threat to social
benefits and employment, and housing). The choice by professional cate-
gory confirms the party’s “proletarianization” already noticeable at the
2016/2017 regional elections. In 2017, 21% of the workers vote AfD,
an increase of 15 points compared to 2013. 21% of the unemployed also
56 Infratest Dimap, WahlREPORT Bundestagswahl 2017 , https://www.infratest-dimap.

de/umfragen-analysen/bundesweit/wahlreport-deutschland/2017/. Accessed on October
1, 2019.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
chose the AfD—a plus of 18 points. 12% of the employees and of the self-
employed elect the AfD—a progress of 7 points. The party also progresses
7 points among the retired persons and reaches 11%. The loss of Die
Linke among the unemployed is striking. For a long time, this was their
preferred party, now it lost more than half of their vote and ended at 11%
(−12 points). The CDU loses heavily among workers and drops to 25%
(−10 points).59
The existence of poor population groups and the growing perception
of a certain social injustice in German society could lead to the assumption
that the AfD of 2017 is the electoral echo chamber of the German lower
class. While the proletarianization of the party’s electorate is obvious, the
AfD also attracts voters from all political persuasions and all social strata,
including “winners of modernization.”60 An August 2017 Yougov poll
showed that 25% of AfD voters earned less than 1500 euros per month,
38% from 1500 to 3000 euros and 25% more than 3000 euros.61
Hence, economic difficulties are not the central element of the AfD
vote. In September 2017, 78% of the population (74% at the time of
the September 2013 Bundestag election) thought that the economy was
doing well or very well. Only 21% of the population disagreed. Merely
a quarter of the AfD electorate consider their personal circumstances to
be poor. On the other hand, AfD voters feel by far the most affected
by inequalities and blame the Grand Coalition for not having tried to
correct social disparities, and for the enrichment of the better-off. Thus,
42% of AfD voters consider themselves rather disadvantaged in Germany,
compared to only 16% of all respondents. This pessimism results in AfD
voters being by far the most dissatisfied with the functioning of German
democracy (all voters: satisfied 70%, dissatisfied 30%; Grüne: 81–19%;
CDU/CSU: 89–11%; SPD: 75–25%; Die Linke 61–38%; FDP: 71–29%;
AfD: 20–80%). This dissatisfaction is the reason of a broad AfD discussion
59 Ibid.
60 Pippa Norris, Radical right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005; Malin Bäckman, Losers of moderniza-
tion or modernization winners? (PDF), Gothenburg University Publications Electronic
Archive, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20150402100635/https://gupea.ub.gu.
se/bitstream/2077/34144/1/gupea_2077_34144_1.pdf. Accessed January 19, 2020.
61 https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2017-08/afd-waehler-terrorbekaempfung-
integration. Accessed September 30, 2019.
104 P. MOREAU
of the “modernization of democracy,” with a particular view to “direct

democracy.”62
These indicators explain the weak rating of the Grand Coalition’s
performance (satisfied: 51%, dissatisfied: 49%) of half of the respondents
in spite of their economic prosperity. The key to this malaise is the
assessment of the Grand Coalition’s refugee policy and Angela Merkel’s
decisions since 2015 (All voters: satisfied 45%, dissatisfied 55%; Grüne
78–22%; CDU/CSU: 66–34%; SPD: 48–52%; Die Linke 38–62%; FDP:
71–29%; AfD: 0–100%).63 Dissatisfaction is particularly high in the East
(64%, 52% in the West).
44% of the respondents consider immigration, in whatever form, the
major problem. It is followed by the question of retirement pensions
(24%) based on the fear of a collapse of their level due to the cost of
immigration (refugees and economic migrants).
Fears are revealing: 62% expect that “crime rates continue to rise.” 46%
fear the (growing) influence of Islam, 38% an increase in immigration.
In its political program, the AfD abundantly deals with all the topics the
major parties have neglected for a long time. However, this programmatic
offer does not provide the AfD with any real competence. Respondents
believe the “Volksparteien” (major catch-all parties) to be the best guar-
antors of prosperity and of the future. They have no illusion at all about
the AfD. The party’s competence scores are generally meager, including
in its favorite topic immigration (fight against crime: 9%, refugee policy:
8%, fight against terrorism: 7%, social justice: 4%).64
How can we explain the 12.6% AfD result, when the voters rate the
party’s skills so poorly? On the one hand, it is a protest vote against
everything perceived to go wrong in Germany, and therefore a utili-
tarian approach to the decision in favor of the AfD (punishing the system
parties, the “old parties”). But it is also the desire to address and eliminate
the problems that have appeared since 2015. The following hypothesis
may be put forward: the protest voters want to preserve the economic and
social course, force the ruling parties to admit their mistakes, particularly
the lack of communication between the political elite and the “masses,”
62 Infratest Dimap, https://www.infratest-dimap.de/umfragen-analysen/bundesweit/

wahlreport-deutschland/2017/. Accessed October 1, 2019.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
and choose a reassuring course for the future (control of immigration and
its long-term costs).
Hence, the 2017 AfD vote is driven by the voters’ disappointment with
the other parties. Clearly, the top candidates play only a secondary role
(10%) among the reasons for this decision. What matters is the party’s
“program” (76%), not in the sense of a well-structured ideological offer,
but for the AfD to exert political pressure at the Bundestag as well as in
the streets on the issues of security, immigration, and the cohesion of the
“community of the German people,” in other words: identity.65
The protest dimension is obvious (AfD voters: “It is above all here to
change the immigration policy with its blows” (92%); “This is the only
party that I can express my protest with” (85%)). The respondents credit
the AfD with listening to their problems: According to 49%, the AfD “has
understood better than the other parties that many people do not feel
safe.” The “extremist” aspect is also important: 86% of all respondents,
but only 55% of the AfD voters state that the AfD “does not distance
itself clearly enough from right-wing extremist positions.”66
Obviously, the AfD vote does not express adherence to a resurging
neo-National Socialism, but the desire to change and improve identity
and security policy. Indisputably, a good part of the speeches delivered
and repeated since 2013 prove the xenophobia of AfD voters. But the
range of measures they desire is rather ambiguous. Although they harbor
strong fears concerning their identity as well as their hostility to Islam
as a political religion, they do not desire to stop the arrival of “genuine
refugees” completely. Similarly, AfD voters do not totally reject the latter’s
integration provided they really want to do so (learn German, respect
German laws and customs, as well as women’s rights).
What role does the AfD play in the German political system of 2020?
Angela Merkel seems considerably weakened with the CDU/CSU/SPD
Grand Coalition in crisis. The chancellor knows that she has to manage
her succession (possibly Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, elected CDU
chairperson in December 2018, or perhaps Friedrich Merz, her close
second). New personalities have emerged with the regional victories of
Saarland, Rhineland-Westphalia, and Schleswig–Holstein, but presently,
the CDU apparatus is in crisis. The reason is obvious: the chancellor’s
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
106 P. MOREAU
policy is much more to the left than CDU members would like.67
Negotiations for the renewal of the Grand Coalition also caused serious
discomfort among CDU members because the CDU conceded several
key ministries to a crisis-torn SPD in decline. In addition, the present
coalition government has by no means resolved the issue of immigration
for which there is still no ceiling. Furthermore, the ecological question has
arisen with increasing urgency and is accelerating the crisis of the political
system.68
The New Federal States---Home Turf of the AfD

This thesis is illustrated by the results of the 2018 and 2019 regional
Landtag elections: In 2018, the AfD received 13.1% (+9%) in Hesse,
10.2% (+10.2%) in Bavaria, and 6.1% (+0.6%) in Bremen. In 2019, at
the regional elections in three East German Länder, the party flourished,
winning 23.5% (+11.3%) in Brandenburg, 27.5% (+17.8%) in Saxony, and
23.4% (+12.8%) in Thuringia.69
The political system of the new federal states needs to be analyzed in
order to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the AfD in view
of the next federal elections.
The election results in Saxony and Brandenburg on 1 September
2019, and in Thuringia on October 27, are rooted in the history of the
German reunification of 1990. Beyond a specific regional context, namely,
a deep collective malaise among the inhabitants of the new Bundesländer,
these elections are another step in the weakening of the major catch-all
parties CDU and SPD, but also of the postcommunist party Die Linke.
The Greens benefit from these elections which have strengthened their
political credibility on the regional and national level. Since then, they
67 https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/studie-der-konrad-adenauer-stiftung-cdu-
mitglieder-sehen-sich-klar-rechts-von-der-partei_id_8034114.html. Accessed September
30, 2019.
68 https://yougov.de/news/2019/09/23/internationale-umfrage-mehrheit-der-weltbe
volkerun/; https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundesregierung-will-klimaziele-
praesentieren-umfrage-zeigt-das-halten-die-bundesbuerger-fuer-die-besten-klimaschutz-
ideen_id_11162909.html. Accessed September 30, 2019.
69 Source: Statistische Landesämter (Statistical offices of the federal states of Branden-
burg, Saxony, and Thuringia).
have newly participated in the governments of the Länder Saxony and

Brandenburg and continued their participation in Thuringia.
But the true winner of these elections is the AfD. Although the SPD
in Brandenburg and the CDU in Saxony managed to remain the ruling
parties, they were forced to find new parliamentary majorities. The “all
democrats against the AfD” strategy was a failure, as was its “anti-fascist”
corollary. The extremist past of Andreas Kalbitz, chairman of the Bran-
denburg AfD, has not weakened the party in any way, and the same
applies to Thuringia where Björn Höcke, head of the völkisch nationalist
wing Der Flügel, chairs the regional AfD. The popularity of Minister-
President Bodo Ramelow is likely to have helped his party Die Linke
remain the strongest regional party, but the AfD outstripped a collapsing
CDU.
The AfD has become the second party in all three federal states, just
like in Saxony-Anhalt since 2015 and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
since 2016. These two states are also located east of the Cold War
Iron Curtain. As in previous elections since 2014, both at national and
regional levels, the AfD has benefitted from the sharp rise in voter turnout
(Saxony: 49.1% in 2014, 66.6% in 2019; Brandenburg: 47.9% in 2014,
61.3% in 2019, Thuringia: 52.7% in 2014, 64.9% in 2019). If votes are
considered in terms of number rather than percentage, the votes of the
AfD in Saxony nearly quadrupled due to this increased turnout: The
national populist party had received 160,000 votes in 2014 and jumped
to 600,000 in 2019 (Thuringia: 99,545 in 2014, 259,382 in 2019).70
Electoral data confirm the trends observed at the national level since
201671 : The AfD attracts young people, workers, voters with low levels
of education, and men.
In Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, the AfD is strong in depop-
ulating rural areas and economically depressed zones as well as along the
70 Source: Statistische Landesämter (Statistical offices of the federal states of Branden-

burg, Saxony, and Thuringia).
71 https://www.kas.de/documents/252038/4521287/Tabellenanhang+-+Landtagsw
ahl+in+Brandenburg+2019+%28PDF%29.pdf/efe49eb8-f29b-0e4c-81e6-626a3de2ff5d?
version=1.0&t=1567672705396: https://www.kas.de/documents/252038/4521287/
Tabellenanhang+-+Landtagswahl+in+Sachsen+2019.pdf/ca8c6fab-01d5-7902-7a98-90f
d82e14886?version=1.0&t=1567493438584; https://www.kas.de/documents/252038/
4521287/Tabellenanhang+-+Landtagswahl+in+Th%C3%BCringen+2019+%28PDF%29.
pdf/315daa24-5f30-f3e5-8705-5a2c9ee3513b?version=1.0&t=1572335444211. Accessed
September 30, 2019.
108 P. MOREAU
borders with the Czech Republic and Poland. A map of the AfD vote
in Brandenburg also shows that the party scores its best results in the
production zones of lignite whose exploitation shall be stopped in the
medium term. In contrast, the electoral zones surrounding Berlin with
their high economic dynamism form a belt of strong repulsion to the
AfD. This phenomenon exists in Thuringia, too: in electoral districts with
a low demographic downturn, the AfD receives 18% of the vote, + 9
points compared to 2014, whereas in electoral districts with a severe loss
of population and in economic decline, the party scores 26% (+15 points
compared to 2014).
The existence of huge divisions between East and West explains the
AfD’s breakthrough. They arise from a deep collective malaise the demo-
cratic parties have not understood or whose seriousness they have refused
to perceive. Some 59% of respondents in Brandenburg agreed with the
statement: “East Germans are second-class citizens” (voters of AfD 77%,
Die Linke 70%, FDP 59%, SPD 56%, CDU 38%, and Greens 36%). In
Saxony, the situation is even more distressing: 66% of respondents agree
with the mentioned statement (voters of AfD 78%, Die Linke 72%, SPD
65%, FDP 63%, CDU 56%, and Greens 34%).
Therefore, reunification seems incomplete while the country celebrated
the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall and is getting ready for the
anniversary of the reunification.
Nostalgia for the GDR is making a surprising comeback, with 37% of
Brandenburg respondents agreeing with the statement “In the GDR era,
the state was doing more for its citizens,” a sentiment particularly shared
by voters of Die Linke (51%) and AfD (46%). In Saxony, there is a similar
trend: 37% agree with this idea. A majority of AfD voters support this
claim (55%), followed by those of Die Linke (50%).
Fears fuel the choice of the AfD. To reach this success, the party has
exploited a number of fears of the Brandenburgers and Saxons. In partic-
ular, attitudes toward Islam played a central role. In fact, in both Länder,
a majority of respondents (54% in Brandenburg and 60% in Saxony) fear
an increase in its influence. Broken down by party, 92 and 98% of AfD
voters in Brandenburg and Saxony respectively reject Islam.
The fear of acculturation supervenes, i.e., the loss of German culture
and language. In May 2019, it preoccupies 53% of the respondents in
Saxony, 49% in Brandenburg, and 40% throughout the Federal Republic
of Germany.
The AfD electorate is also much divided on the issue of climate change,
with more than half of them (51% in Brandenburg and 62% in Saxony)
declaring not to be worried about the destruction of their living condi-
tions due to climate change. In fact, climate skepticism was one of the
AfD’s campaign issues in both Länder. 90% of Brandenburg and 88% of
Saxon AfD voters appreciate the fact that “the AfD opposes other parties
in the climate debate.”
Depending on party preference, the perception of democracy varies
widely in East Germany. In Brandenburg, 48% of respondents are dissat-
isfied with the functioning of democracy, 52% are satisfied. The party
breakdown shows that 73% of Green voters are satisfied, 67% of SPD, 65%
of CDU, 59% of FDP, 50% of Die Linke, and only 13% of AfD voters. In
Saxony, only 45% of respondents believe democracy to function properly
(dissatisfied: AfD 86%, Die Linke 53%, FDP 40%, SPD 38%, CDU 30%,
Greens 23%).
The AfD has understood the reasons of this malaise perfectly well.
The party developed a campaign around the topic of the “completion
of reunification” benefiting the “Easterners” having suffered from the
economic and cultural policy of the German governments since 1990.
This campaign was extremely well received by the voters in the new
German federal states.
In early 2020, the democratic parties still have not found a cure to ease
the malaise of the voters. General elections loom on the horizon (presum-
ably in 2021), and, according to current data, the AfD clearly achieved
its objectives: weakening democratic parties and incarnating “opposition”
to the system. The relative triumph of this party is, however, a double-
edged sword. At the AfD’s December 2019 federal party conference,
Björn Höcke’s and Andreas Kalbitz’s nationalist and socialist wing (Der
Flügel ) called for and obtained a stronger role in the party’s leadership.
However, this current’s radicalism is an obstacle to the party’s develop-
ment in the old Bundesländer and has triggered resignations of moderate
elements in the party.72
While the AfD seems to be in a position of relative strength after its
successes in the New Bundesländer, the FPÖ is in crisis in 2020.
72 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-und-bundestag-polizist-lars-her
rmann-tritt-aus-partei-und-fraktion-aus-a-1301991.html. Accessed September 30, 2019.
110 P. MOREAU
The FPÖ: A Modernized “Old” Party

For decades, the Freedom Party of Austria was the most powerful national
populist party in Europe. In the course of its long political history, the
FPÖ has participated in several coalition governments. In the 1960s,
the SPÖ was its partner in government; from the year 2000, it was the
conservative ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party).73
The growing electoral support of the Freiheitlichen (at the 2016 pres-
idential elections, FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer had received 46.21% of
the vote) had made their participation in power more than probable in
order to end the unpopular grand coalition (ÖVP-SPÖ). The coalition
with the Kurz list in 2017, and the rupture of this government coalition
in May 2019, are fundamental turning points in the Austrian political
system. At the 2019 European elections, the FPÖ lost votes, but still
remained the third largest political force in Austria. The national elec-
tions of September 2019, however, turned into a political disaster for the
party. Its decline has accelerated in 2020 after the expulsion of former
party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and a split in the FPÖ in Vienna
and Lower Austria.
The Sebastian Kurz List

Sebastian Kurz, born in 1986, is a political talent and a gifted communi-
cator, debater, and political strategist. Compared with him, former FPÖ
chairman Heinz-Christian Strache remained dull despite his rhetorical
abilities. This applies to Strache’s successor Norbert Hofer, too.
Kurz had comprehended the Austrian voters’ desire for change when
he put up his polling list for the 2017 elections. In addition, he had closely
studied “Macron’s method” in France.
The blockage of Austrian politics associated with the SPÖ/ÖVP grand
coalitions of the past and with the proporz system, the crises of the
European Union, and the immigration growing since 2015 were topics
demanding “a different policy.” For this reason, Kurz designed a complex
and innovative campaign: he opted for “new faces”—women and men,
73 Patrick Moreau, De Jörg Haider à Heinz-Christian Strache: L’extrême droite autrichi-

enne à l’assaut du pouvoir, Paris, Edition du Cerf, 2012; idem, LÁutriche des populistes,
Paris, Fondapol, 2016; idem, Autriche: virage à droite, Paris, Fondapol, 2017.
often without an ÖVP past, from civil society and successful in their
professional lives.
He criticized the enlargement policy of the European Union as well
as the modus operandi of the European Commission, demanding change
and reform. These changes and reforms ought to reflect the fault lines
developed in the course of the Greek debt crisis, as well as concerning
the question of Turkey’s accession and the opening of the borders. Kurtz
insisted on a policy of very strict regulation of immigration to Austria,
but also to the European Union as a whole. He had adopted this concept
word by word from the FPÖ, which thus had to share its tradition-
ally most important election pledge with the Kurz list. Furthermore, he
offered a tougher security policy in order to fight petty crime, transna-
tional crime, counterterrorism, and similar felonies. In addition, he made
the fight against islamization an important topic of his electoral campaign.
Ethically, Kurz is a Catholic conservative very close to the church.
But he is not a reactionary. Rejecting Islam, he refers to the values of
freedom (women, minorities, etc.) and claims that Islam is a political reli-
gion diametrically opposed to the democratic and constitutional values of
the West. His biographers insist that his political socialization had been
influenced by conflicts with migrants in high school. From 2009 to 2017,
as Federal Chairman of the Young ÖVP (JVP), he constantly raised the
issue of immigration.74
Both the FPÖ and the Kurz List designed their campaigns on the
results of the polls.75 The electorate wanted a turquoise-blue govern-
ment, demanded strict anti-immigration measures and a tough security
policy, combined with an economic program that was liberal but never-
theless addressing economic problems like the zero interest rate set by
the European Central Bank or the de facto non-taxation of companies
like Amazon or Google.
74 Paul Ronzheimer, Sebastian Kurz: Die Biografie, Freiburg, Herder, 2018; Judith
Grohmann, Sebastian Kurz—die offizielle Biografie, Munich, FBV, 2019; Thomas
Albrecht, Die Rhetorik des Sebastian Kurz. Was steckt dahinter? Körpersprache verbessern,
in Diskussionen überzeugen und Rededuelle gewinnen. Analyse mit dem 4mat-System,
Berlin, Goldegg Verlag GmbH, 2019.
75 https://www.profil.at/oesterreich/nationalratswahl-umfragen-8337471. Accessed
January 20, 2020.
112 P. MOREAU
Thus, the similarity between the 2017 programs of the FPÖ and the
Kurz list was not surprising. It clearly showed both parties’ intention to
form a government after an election victory.
They won the elections: The Kurz list obtained 31.5%, the FPÖ 26%,
and the SPÖ 26.9% (Table 5.2).
Politically, the 2017 arguments remained key elements of the 2019
election campaigns of both FPÖ and the Kurz list, which was to include
an extensive ecological program.76
In the 2017–2019 coalition government, the FPÖ held numerous
important government positions and ministries, including the Ministries
of Defense and of the Interior, the secret services, police, sports, the
Ministry of Infrastructure, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but
without the responsibility for Europe of which Kurz alone was in charge.
The coalition fulfilled its election promises: the government took
up the fight against immigration and started to make migrants’ lives
uncomfortable. At the same time, it moved its security policy into a
higher gear: Islamic structures were closed down or banned (nursery
schools, schools, mosques, etc.). In the European Union, Kurz adopted
a more distanced attitude toward the Visegrad states (Poland, the Czech
Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia) than expected. Instead, he played the
role of a bridge-builder between the various European political currents.
A journalist called him the “Anti-Macron” defending a national Austrian
vision, but at the same time supporting a reformed “post-Merkel and
post-Junker” European Union.77 Although he does not use the concept
of a “Europe of Nations,” it can safely be assumed a part of his European
project.
Since the 15 October 2017 elections, all polls showed a steadily rising
approval of Kurz’s government, even though the unions gritted their
teeth on its social policy. Since May 2019, Kurz’s popularity among voters
has remained above 30% while the FPÖ lost support and the SPÖ plum-
meted. The results of the September 2019 elections confirmed this trend.
This benefitted the liberal Neos (8%) and the Greens (14%) and made
76 https://www.diepresse.com/5282083/wahlprogramme-der-parteien-was-spo-ovp-
fpo-grune-und-neos-fordern; https://www.vienna.at/nationalratswahl-2019-das-wahlpr
ogramm-der-oevp/6334803. Accessed December 27, 2019.
77 https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/plus171768689/Oesterreichs-Bundeskanzler-
Sebastian-Kurz-Der-Anti-Macron-in-Bruessel.html. Accessed December 27, 2019.
Table 5.2 The FPÖ program 2017 in comparison with the program of the
Sebastian Kurz List
Program Sebastian Kurz List FPÖ
Economy Reduction of the tax burden Reduction of the tax burden

from 43 to 40%, annual from 43.2% to below 40%
reduction by e12 to 14 billion, (cost: e12 billion) in annual
and fight against tax fraud steps of 0.5%
Reduction of the public debt Reduction of social spending
ratio to 60% in the medium programs (saving e 3.8
term billion)
Inclusion of the “debt brake” Stop of the transnational tax
in the constitution optimization of large
Stop of the transnational tax e-commerce companies
optimization of large Holding referenda on the
e-commerce companies transatlantic trade and
Combating the zero interest investment partnerships
rate policy of the European Abolition of international
Central Bank and the abolition commercial courts
of cash Merging of social insurance
Reform of the solidarity-based schemes
system of unemployment
benefits
Merging of social insurance
schemes
Work/Labor Market Introduction of only one kind Reduction of companies’ labor
of “employee.” This would costs and of their tax burden
affect 1.4 million workers and from 25 to 12.5%
2 million salaried employees. It Reduction of bureaucracy and
would require the amendment support of business creation so
of collective agreements, the that Austrian companies
standardization of notice remain in the country
periods, and the regulation of Reform of the basic social
paid sick leave security system; granting
demand-oriented minimum
benefits to Austrians only
Immigration Closure of migration routes in Closure of migration routes in
the Mediterranean and the the Mediterranean and the
Balkans Balkans
Expulsion of illegal immigrants Expulsion of illegal immigrants
Reduction of subsidies and Creation of a fund “for the
assistance to non-Austrians protection of the fatherland
Stop of investments in Muslim and the dominant culture”
nursery schools No work permit for asylum
seekers, right to work for
Austrians only
(continued)
114 P. MOREAU
Table 5.2 (continued)
Program Sebastian Kurz List FPÖ
(Internal) Increase of the number of Increase of the number of

Security police officers and provision of police officers and provision of
the necessary equipment the necessary equipment
Protection of the Austrian Protection of the Austrian
borders and cooperation with borders and creation of a
Frontex border police force
Combating transnational Combating transnational
organized crime organized crime
Combating of petty crime and Combating of petty crime and
drug trafficking drug trafficking
Source The author
them possible coalition partners of the ÖVP. The FPÖ decided to join
the opposition.
The Modernization of the FPÖ

In 1986, Jörg Haider took over the FPÖ leadership. Since then, the party
has become a key actor of the Austrian political system (1986: 9.7%; 1990:
16.6%; 1994: 22.5%; 1995: 21.9%). At the 1999 National Elections, the
FPÖ became the strongest party (26.9%). It took until 2017 for the FPÖ
to reach a similar election result (26.0%). In 1999, due to this success,
the FPÖ was able to form a coalition government with the ÖVP for the
first time.78
The rise of the FPÖ since 1986 is the result of the development of the
Austrian political system and its blockage and gridlock.
The second Austrian Republic, founded in 1945, is characterized by
the hypertrophy of two political parties, namely ÖVP and SPÖ. Austria
became the incarnation of the “democracy of concordance” (Proporz).79
The social-democratic and conservative elites established a system of
mutual guarantee of participation in power. Its objective was to neutralize
78 https://www.bmi.gv.at/412/Nationalratswahlen/start.aspx. Accessed December 27,

2019.
79 Anton Pelinka, “Die FPÖ in der vergleichenden Parteienforschung. Zur typologis-
chen Einordnung der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs”, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für
Politikwissenschaft 3/2002, pp. 281–299.
every risk of voters changing their electoral decisions, and it worked until
1986. This system is referred to as Austro-corporatism. In this scheme,
the FPÖ was an outsider party able to make the Proporz system its arch
enemy. Thus, Jörg Haider’s success since 1986 must be considered a
manifestation of the “de-concentration” of a political system that had
achieved its maximum level of integration around 1975.
Quite correctly, the FPÖ has been presented as a variation of a
European phenomenon described as “national populist,” which includes
many parties like the Freedom Parties, Northern League/League, True
Finns/Finns Party, Vlaams Belang, National Front/National Rally, etc.80
However, personally as well as ideologically, the FPÖ is deeply rooted in
the Austrian past since the nineteenth century, making it an insider party.
It is the successor of “German nationalism” and its history, and through
this latter, of (Austrian and Hitlerian) National Socialism.
The foundation of the FPÖ on the organizational remains of the
Federation of Independents (Verband der Unabhängigen—VdU , founded
on 25 March 1949) was induced by the intention to establish a party
welcoming former National Socialists and enabling their return to politics.
All party officials were former NSDAP and/or SS members.81
Still, the FPÖ was an accepted actor of the Austrian political system of
the 1950s and 1960s. From 1963, contacts were established between the
then national-liberal FPÖ and the SPÖ leading to a coalition in 1983. It
was continued until Jörg Haider became chairman of the FPÖ in 1986.
At the 1999 general elections, the FPÖ became the strongest party in
Austria, and for six years participated in two governments under the
chancellorship of Wolfgang Schüssel, ÖVP. In 2005, the Alliance for the
Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich—BZÖ) split off with Jörg
Haider at its head and committed itself to the government Schüssel II.
From the 1990s until 2019, on the level of the Länder and munici-
palities, the FPÖ had become a major political power. The 2015–2017
election results show this: Upper Austria 2015: 30.4%; Vorarlberg 2014:
80 Göran Adamson, Populist Parties and the Failure of the Political Elites: The
Rise of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), DemOkrit/Studien zur Parteienkritik und
Parteienhistorie, Band 6, Tübingen, Peter Lang, 2016.
81 Lothar Höbelt, Von der vierten Partei zur dritten Kraft. Die Geschichte des VdU.
Graz, Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1999; Bericht der FPÖ-Historikerkommission, https://
www.fpoe.at/fileadmin/user_upload/www.fpoe.at/dokumente/2019/PDFs/Buch-Histor
ikerkommission-Web.pdf. Accessed January 10, 2020.
116 P. MOREAU
23.4%; Vienna 2015: 30.8%; Carinthia 2018: 22.9%. In the second

round of the 2016 presidential elections, FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer
obtained 46.2% of the votes (Burgenland 58.1%; Carinthia 54.6%; Styria
52.7%; Lower Austria 49.3%). He received his lowest score in Vienna
(34.3%).82
Tolerated by SPÖ and ÖVP, the FPÖ also provided the state premier
in Carinthia, Jörg Haider (1989–1991; 1999–2008). In this respect, one
cannot speak about a genuine political isolation of the FPÖ.
Nowhere else in Europe has another party so clearly rooted in the
National Socialist past and its crimes found such widespread political
acceptance. Haider’s FPÖ never distanced itself from Nazism at all.83
Since 2005, his successor Strache pursued a different policy, despite
numerous verbal excesses of the FPÖ’s German national party appa-
ratus.84
The FPÖ’s 2017 Triumph

Since 1986, when its electoral power started to grow, the FPÖ has always
been a right-wing populist/national populist party. It is also character-
istic of the Austrian society’s postmodern development. Haider’s FPÖ,
but also Strache’s, was a party which had overcome the traditional (espe-
cially class) “cleavages” of the other parties. With the exception of gender
(feeble attractiveness to women), the party goes beyond other cleavages,
like that of the generations (preference of the young generation until
2019). Furthermore, within 15 years, the FPÖ had become a work-
ers’ party (1986: 10%; 1990: 21%; 1994: 29%; 1995: 34%; 1999: 47%),
and this trend continued until 2017/2018 (52%) and 2019 (48%). Until
1999, Haider’s FPÖ was especially attractive for men, young men, voters
with a low level of education and no links with organized labor, workers,
82 https://www.wahldatenbank.at/. Accessed October 1, 2019.

83 Wolfgang Haserer, Der Rechtspopulist Jörg Haider—Eine Analyse seines politischen
Erfolges in Österreich, Munich, Grins, 2011; https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/1025/1/
pw_49.pdf. Accessed November 30, 2019.
84 Philipp Mittnik, Die FPÖ—eine rechtsextreme Partei?: Zur Radikalisierung der
Freiheitlichen unter HC-Strache, Munich, Lit Verlag 2010.
and voters with weak religious bonds. This has remained the party’s voter
base until today.85
The 2017 general election shows the party’s progress in the elec-
torate, but highlights the persistence of its sociological weaknesses, too.
In 2017, the FPÖ’s gender gap was 7 points (men 29%; women 22%),
a phenomenon we know from the AfD, but also from most nativist
parties in Europe.86 On the other hand, the party achieved a break-
through among young voters. The FPÖ was the first party among the
under-30-year-old voters (30%; ÖVP 28%, SPÖ 17%), and number two
among the 30–59 age group (28%; ÖVP 31%, SPÖ 27%). But it was
under-represented among the 60 + voters (19%; ÖVP 36% SPÖ 34%).87
The FPÖ wins over 52% of the workers (ÖVP 15%, SPÖ 19%), 26%
of the employees (ÖVP 31%, SPÖ 26%), 23% of the self-employed (ÖVP
41%, SPÖ 14%), and 16% of the retired persons (ÖVP 33%, SPÖ 39%).
The breakdown by level of education has remained the same since 1986
and is similar to that of the AfD: FPÖ: primary school 33% (ÖVP 25%,
SPÖ 33%), apprenticeship 33% (ÖVP 28%, SPÖ 25%); secondary school
without exit diploma 21% (ÖVP 41%, SPÖ 21%); secondary school exit
diploma (Matura) 10% (ÖVP 42%, SPÖ 25%); university 7% (ÖVP 32%,
SPÖ 31%).88
Since 1986, the FPÖ clientele has been characterized by the fact that
the voters consider themselves losers of the democracy of concordance.
Their political choice (voting FPÖ) does not at all express the will to
adhere to social mobility. On the contrary, it manifests their rejection of
this mobility. This electorate can be referred to as a “society shut in all
around defense.” These voters feel that security—formerly granted by the
Proporz system—is no longer available for everybody, and that market
85 Patrick Moreau, https://www.fondapol.org/etude/patrick-moreau-autriche-virage-a-

droite/. Accessed October 1, 2019.
86 Tim Immerzeel, Hilde Coffé, Tania van der Lippe, Explaining the Gender Gap in
Radical Right Voting: A Cross-national Investigation in 12 Western European Countries,
Comparative European Politics (Comp Eur Polit) 13, 2015, pp. 263–286; Niels Spierings,
Andrej Zaslove, Gendering the Vote for Populist Radical-Right Parties, https://www.tandfo
nline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322X.2015.1024404. Accessed November 30, 2019.
87 SORA, https://www.sora.at/themen/wahlverhalten/wahlanalysen/nrw17.html.
Accessed October 1, 2019.
88 Ibid.
118 P. MOREAU
economy (with its crises) has sounded the death knell for the fair distri-
bution of “profits.” Thus, the political elites of the grand coalition have
failed. Therefore, the FPÖ voters consider themselves “anti-elitist” or
supporters of a new alternative freiheitlich elite whose desired function is
redistributive. Thus, the FPÖ’s success is based on the conflict lines of the
Austrian society’s modernization. At least during its first phase, the party
collected the losers of modernization. Polls confirmed this trend: the
FPÖ is exceptionally strong in the nongovernmental economic sectors.
Still, Haider, and especially Strache, succeeded in assembling winners of
modernization around this huge “neo-proletarian” core.89
In Austria, and this applies to Germany, too, winners and losers define
themselves in terms of identification with the national community and
its future. The “losing” FPÖ or AfD supporters consider globalization a
negative trend involving the denationalization not only of politics, but
also of economy and culture. This group includes small and medium
entrepreneurs and skilled workers in protected sectors (this protection
being called into question), all low-skilled or unskilled workers, the lower
classes, and citizens attached to the Austrian or German nation and iden-
tity. The winners of globalization are a priori supporters of post-national
values. They are entrepreneurs and skilled workers in sectors open to
international competition, the upper middle classes, but also individualist
and cosmopolitan citizens. But due to the intensification of international
competition and crises like that of 2008, many economic players in open
sectors are afraid of the future. This applies to the upper middle classes,
who fear that they will no longer benefit from economic liberalism and are
worried about the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small minority
refusing to share their riches. The role of another aspect is growing: voters
wish to preserve the achievements of the past (social security, health care,
retirement pensions, etc.), and they are also concerned about national
and personal identity (preserving and safeguarding of the “Heimat,”, the
German language, the Austrian culture, etc.).90
89 Christoph Butterwege, Gudrun Hentges, Rechtspopulismus, Arbeitswelt und Armut:

Befunde aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, Opladen, Verlag Barbara Budrich,
2008.
90 Franz Fallend, Fabian Habersack, Reinhard Heinisch, “Rechtspopulismus in Österreich:
Zur Entwicklung der FPÖ”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 68:34–35, 2018, pp. 33–40.
The 2019 European Elections---The First

Indicator of the Decline of the FPÖ
The 2019 Europeans were held in the aftermath of the split between the
Kurz list and the FPÖ following the publication of excerpts of the Ibiza
video. It depicted Strache offering economic privileges to the alleged
niece of a Russian oligarch, and outlining corruption practices. But the
effects of this video on the majority of the 2017 FPÖ voters were still
limited in May 2019. They remained loyal to the party.91 The ÖVP
won the elections (34.55%, + 7.57 points compared to 2014). The SPÖ
remained stable (3.89%, − 0.2 points). With 17.2% of the vote, the FPÖ
lost 2.02 points, while the Greens scored a modest 8.44% (+0.3 points).
Despite the different types of elections, the sociology of the FPÖ elec-
torate at the European election was similar to that of 2017. But there
was one important novelty for the future, namely, the breakthrough
of the Greens among women under 45, voters under 30, and univer-
sity graduates. This trend continued at the September 2019 National
elections.
The electoral transfers 2017—EU2019 show that the FPÖ primarily
loses “winners of modernization and globalization” to the Kurz list or
the Neos.92 Some of these voters had returned from the abstentionist
camp in 2017 when the turnout had risen to 80% (+6.1 points compared
to 2013).
There is no doubt that the FPÖ has considerably weakened after the
European elections. But it still preserved its core of neo-proletarian voters
from the 2005–2017 elections. This was due to the extraordinary confu-
sion that arose from the Ibiza affair.93 Doubtlessly, Strache’s words were
shocking. But a large number of FPÖ voters were still grateful for what
the FPÖ leader had achieved since 2005: rebuilding a powerful party
greatly weakened after the split off of Haider and his Bündnis Zukunft
Österreich. Moreover, the growing number of conspiracy theories (the
Ibiza affair as a secret service operation, the hidden hand of Kurtz, etc.)
91 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000109168988/wer-waehlte-wie-waehlergr
uppen-und-ihre-motive. Accessed October 1, 2019.
92 https://www.sora.at/themen/wahlverhalten/wahlanalysen/waehlerstromanalysen/
eu-wahl19.html. Accessed October 1, 2019.
93 Bastian Obermayer, Frederik Obermaier, Die Ibiza-Affäre: Innenansichten eines
Skandals, Cologne, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2019.
120 P. MOREAU
provided Strache with the image of a possible victim. This positive percep-
tion has disappeared in 2020 with the discovery of numerous affairs that
are under judicial investigation: prevarication, presumptuous expenses,
sale of MPs’ positions, illegal financing, etc.
Characteristics of the FPÖ’s National Populism

The 2017 and 2019 FPÖ programs focus on five central topics. In 2019,
ecology made its programmatic appearance. But it was clearly not among
the priorities for the September general elections. Instead, the party
emphasized its denial of climate change during the election campaign.
A racist, nationalist, and islamophobic frame of reference hides behind
xenophobia and the rejection of strangers. It is shared by losers and
winners of modernization alike. The mobilization of resentment and
rejection of social groups (like migrants and refugees, Romani people and
gypsies, decadent intellectuals, etc.) is typical of right-wing populism.94
This also holds true for the 2017 and 2019 FPÖ program that is secu-
ritarian (focusing on the people’s fears of terrorism, petty crime, drug
trafficking, burglaries and robberies, etc.). It contains an incoherent
mixture of commitment to economic liberalism and market economy
combined with the demand for interventionism (national preference, no
integration of foreigners into the health-care and retirement systems,
control of the banking sector, withdrawal from the Euro and the Euro-
pean Union (presently abandoned), and a policy of subsidies of numerous
social groups).95 Still another aspect of this discourse justifies the charac-
terization of the FPÖ as a national-populist party: it is the permanent
reference to “us” and “them” (the others) on the national level—a
94 Roger Eatwell, Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal
Democracy, Gretna, Pelican, 2018, https://martenscentre.eu/sites/default/files/pub
lication-files/exposing-demagogues-right-wing-and-national-populist-parties-europe.pdf.
Accessed November 30, 2019.
95 Berivan Ergen, Simon Krause, Johanna Rinne, Eine Diskursanalyse des EU-
Skeptizismus des Front National, der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs und der Partei
für die Freiheit, Würzburger Arbeitspapiere zur Politikwissenschaft und Soziologie 10,
Würzburg, Universität Würzburg, 2019, https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/
opus4-wuerzburg/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/18091/file/WAPS10_Ergen_Krause_
Rinne_EU-Skeptizismus.pdf. Accessed November 30, 2019.
populist classic.96 All these elements are also present in the programs of
the AfD.
A Party “of a Different Type”?

If we were to isolate one specific aspect of the “right-wing extremism”
of Haider’s as well as Strache’s FPÖ, we should turn to the leadership
of the party, and after the 2017 elections, to the FPÖ’s members of the
National Council, ministers, and the new responsible persons/department
heads of the ministries at the time. The FPÖ recruited most of its senior
leaders and managers from the milieu of the nationalist dueling student
corporations (fencing fraternities, schlagende Studentenverbindungen), just
like all the German nationalist parties/movements in Austria before
(Alldeutsche, Großdeutsche Volkspartei and Austrian NSDAP ). Jörg Haider
was a member of the Burschenschaft Silvania, Heinz-Christian Strache of
the Wiener Pennale Burschenschaft Vandalia. The culture of these corpo-
rations creates a strictly normed social milieu (masculine, dueling and
mensur scars, and political identity). These fencing fraternities have been
characteristic of Austrian right-wing extremism like no other culture. This
specific politico-ideological sphere survives and prospers within the FPÖ
to this very day. It is Austrian and Austrian only, even if the German AfD
has started recruiting members in nationalist students’ corporations.97
Due to its undeniable historical entrenchment, right-wing extremism
has always enjoyed a certain social respectability in Austria. In addition,
these corporations offer the advantage of consisting of university students
with high educational levels, with an emphasis on jurisprudence and
economics. The traditional administrative and economic elites were—and
partially still are—influenced by these corporations.98
96 Dominique Reynié, Populismes: la pente fatale, Paris, Plon, 2011; Karin Priester,
Rechter und linker Populismus. Annäherung an ein Chamäleon, Frankfurt am Main,
Campus, 2012; Cas Mudde, Rovira Cristóbal Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short
Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017.
97 https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/schockierende-tv-dokumentation-mitgli
edschaft-frage-des-blutes-burschenschaften-als-neue-afd-kaderschmiede_id_9778486.html.
Accessed September 30, 2019.
98 Hans-Henning Scharsach, Stille Machtergreifung: Hofer, Strache und die Burschen-
schaften, Vienna, K&S Verlag, 2017.
122 P. MOREAU
All these elements make Austrian right-wing extremism a traditional

milieu, namely this German nationalist pseudo-aristocracy, and a neo-
proletarian movement on the other. This is truly a unique case in
Europe.
Program and De-Demonization of the FPÖ

Strache had to face the challenge of modernizing the party in order to
participate in a coalition government, but without risking an internal
crisis.99
With extreme caution, Strache’s FPÖ officially abandoned historical
German nationalist rhetoric. Haider, and Strache very rigorously, replaced
it with Austrian “patriotism.” Enemies (European Commission, migrants
and refugees, vagrants, etc.) are identified against the backdrop of national
interpretation.100 The Austrian nation, the ultimate reference value, must
be defended at all costs. This is no longer true for a hypothetical Germanic
state stretching from the Alsace to Poland. Moving from the utopia
of Austria’s self-dissolution within a Greater Germany toward a strictly
nationalist orientation (with the exception of South Tyrol, which the
FPÖ still reclaims) was a fundamental change. It had the advantage of
offering the party a new line of discourse when Austria joined the Euro-
pean Community. The FPÖ has been able to remain opposed to what
it calls the “cold monster of Brussels” and to every attempt to create a
supranational state.
Considering further modernizations, the most striking are a clear pro-
Putin line and extremely close contacts between the FPÖ and the Russian
presidential administration as well as numerous oligarchs (until January
2020).101 In addition, Russia has discreetly financed the FPÖ—and
possibly the AfD, too, by the way. Putin was presented as the advocate of a
Eurasian project, of a different “great Europe of nations,” removed from
the influence of America, vector of economic dependency and cultural
99 Martin Hobek, HC Strache: Vom Rebell zum Staatsmann, Graz, Leopold Stocker
Verlag, 2018.
100 Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2007, pp. 64–78.
101 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fpoe-russland-strache-gudenus-putin-1.445
2906, https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article193907319/Ibiza-Affaere-zeigt-
wie-FPOe-seit-Jahren-auf-Putins-Russland-baut.html. Accessed November 25, 2019.
decline. The ideological element shared by Russia and the “patriots” of

the FPÖ (and the AfD)—besides nationalism and the hostility toward
the Europe of Brussels—was Russia’s commitment to fight Islamism by
military means. The closeness to Putin became the reason for Strache’s
downfall and the break of the coalition with Kurz. The Ibiza video also
raised the question of the financing of the FPÖ.102
At this point, we can ascertain the primacy of anti-Islamic racism in
2019. Since Strache had become head of the party in 2005, he made the
fight against immigration a core topic within the framework of “national
patriotism,” and combined it with criticism of the “political” nature of
Islam per se (incompatibility with the Austrian constitution and the values
it is based on). This focus was intensified in 2015 and 2016 with the
arrival of some 115,000 refugees.103 Strache’s anti-immigration strategy
was so successful that the ÖVP and its rising star Sebastian Kurz, then
minister of foreign affairs, became the strongest opponents of Angela
Merkel’s refugee policy, together with Hungary and the other Eastern
European countries. By the way, this topic was one of Kurz’s vote winners
at the 2017 as well as the September 2019 national elections.
A “Sunday for Future” for the Green Party

The success of the Kurz list on 29 September 2019 is undeniable. With
37.5%, it increased its share of the vote by 6.1 percentage points. The
SPÖ scored its lowest election result ever (21.2%) and lost 5.7 points. The
Greens achieved a breakthrough (13.9%) with a plus of 10.1 points. The
FPÖ collapsed to 16.2% of the vote (−9.8 points). The NEOS obtained
a disappointing score (8.1%, + 2.8 points). The voter turnout dropped
to 75.6% (−4.4%).104
The FPÖ was expecting a defeat, but a limited one. In fact, in early
September 2019, despite the scandals, 50% of the respondents said that
they had been satisfied with the previous ÖVP-FPÖ government. On the
102 Luka Nedic, Rhetorik rechtspopulistischer Parteien in Österreich (mit Schwerpunkt

FPÖ und ihre letzten zwei Wahlkämpfe: Bundespräsidentenwahl 2016 und Nationalratswahl
2017), Vienna, GrG, 2019.
103 Farid Hafez, Islamophober Populismus: Moschee- und Minarettbauverbote österreichis-
cher Parlamentsparteien, Wiesbaden, vs research, 2010.
104 Thomas Hofer, Barbara Tóth, Wahl 2019: Strategien, Schnitzel, Skandale, Köln, Eco,
2919.
124 P. MOREAU
other hand, only 3 out of 10 ÖVP voters wanted to renew the coalition
with the FPÖ. The growing estrangement between the ÖVP and FPÖ
electorates had one single cause: the series of scandals affecting the FPÖ,
and especially its former leader Strache. “Strache-Gate” (the former FPÖ
chairman allegedly misappropriated party funds for his own benefit)105
contributed to the demobilization of the FPÖ’s electoral core.
The analysis of electoral transfers shows the change of voters’ partisan
preferences. The Kurz list retains 86% of its 2017 voters. It wins 258,000
votes from the FPÖ, and 74,000 from the SPÖ. The Social Democrats
convince only 68% of its 2017 voters and lose 193,000 votes to the
Greens and 74,000 to the ÖVP. The FPÖ is only able to mobilize 54%
of its 2017 electorate. It loses 285,000 votes to the ÖVP and 235,000
to the abstentionist camp. Besides the ÖVP, the Greens were the second
winner of the election and became possible coalition partners.
In September 2019, the FPÖ was reduced to its hard-core partisans,
while the Greens won voters from the whole political spectrum. The polls
from October 2019 to January 2020 show that this core has continued
to erode. In early 2020, the FPÖ is only the 4th party (12%) behind the
Greens (17%) and the SPÖ (17%).106
It is too early to know whether this decline will last, but the FPÖ is
experiencing a double crisis of image as well as organization, which is
deepened by the coalition contract between the Greens and the ÖVP.
Strache’s expulsion from the FPÖ has not solved one single problem.
The general public does not believe that the current leadership of the
FPÖ knew nothing about Strache’s shortcomings (provided they shall
be recognized by the courts). In addition, the party is weakened by the
latent conflict between current chairman Norbert Hofer and Herbert
Kickl, former minister of the interior, who dreams of taking control of the
party. Many of the chairpersons of the FPÖ’s regional federations reject
this option. They consider Kickl an extremist and ideologically very close
to the Identitarian movement. Furthermore, since Strache’s expulsion, the
party has suffered two split offs. In Vienna, three members of the regional
105 https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000108984421/ibiza-hintermaenner-belasten-
strache-mit-neuem-material-zu-spesenabrechnung. Accessed December 30, 2019.
106 https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20191214_OTS0007/profil-umfrage-
fpoe-erstmals-hinter-gruenen. Accessed January 1, 2020.
parliament founded the “Alternative for Austria,”107 which could become

the germ cell of a “Strache Party” for the regional elections in Vienna in
2020.108 Finally, in January, in Lower Austria, the former chairman of the
regional FPÖ federation founded a party competing with the FPÖ.109
The establishment of the turquoise-green government on 7 January
2020, is a challenge for the future of the FPÖ. The government program
is based on a deal: Chancellor Kurz has opted for ecologizing Austria
under the aegis of the Greens,110 but in exchange, he has imposed a
tough anti-immigration, anti-Islamic, and security policy.111 Kurz’s objec-
tive is to keep the 2017 FPÖ voters who defected and joined his electorate
in 2019. For this reason, he intends to stick as closely as possible to
the Austrian population’s rejection of Islam and hostility to immigra-
tion. Furthermore, he aims to weaken the FPÖ in the long term and
has pledged an offensive policy against the far-right and the Identi-
tarian movement. Like in 2017, Kurz has seized the FPÖ’s anti-migration
discourse for his own benefit. In 2020, he leaves the Freiheitlichen with
only a thin anti-ecological argument.112
In early January, the FPÖ started working on a new program and
an organizational reform. All the general secretaries of the party were
replaced by Michael Schedlitz, known for his sympathy for the Identi-
tarian movement. Officially, membership in the FPÖ shall only be possible
107 https://www.derstandard.at/story/1379291727618/alternative-fuer-oesterreich-
formiert-sich; https://de-de.facebook.com/pages/category/Political-Organization/Af%
C3%96-Alternative-f%C3%BCr-%C3%96sterreich-NEU-714751741872673/. Accessed
December 25, 2019.
108 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112590608/strache-sieht-grosse-chancen-
fuer-daoe-bei-wien-wahl. Accessed December 24, 2019.
109 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112977565/ex-fpnoe-klubobmann-huber-
startet-neue-liste. Accessed January 6, 2020.
110 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112982540/wirtschaft-und-finanzeno
ekologisierung-von-dienstwagenflotten; https://www.derstandard.at/story/200011285
4507/klima-und-energie-aus-fuer-fossile-heizungen-klimacheck-fuer-gesetze. Accessed
January 6, 2020.
111 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112862755/innere-sicherheit-mehr-pol
izei-sicherungshaft-und-der-kampf-gegen-politischen; https://www.derstandard.at/story/
2000112850764/vorbild-doew-tuerkis-gruen-plant-dokumentationsstelle-fuer-politischen-
islam; https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112893130/aufreger-einsperren-ohne-ver
brechen-und-ausweichen-auf-tuerkis-blau. Accessed January 6, 2020.
112 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95oxYNHE2nI. Accessed January 8, 2020.
126 P. MOREAU
after resignation from the Identitarian movement in the future. A draft

program was published.113
The battle plan against the turquoise-green government includes the
intensification of the fight against the “political Islam” which “permeates
all aspects of life,” and a campaign demanding a “tightening of criminal
law.” Under the concept of the “protection of the Heimat,” the FPÖ
wants to develop the infrastructure in Austria’s rural regions, build new
motorway exits, and digitalize the country. Three new keywords are also
to be brought into focus: family, freedom, and values. The FPÖ wants
to support families by granting parents to work at home (home office).
But this requires a good internet connection. All-day schools and more
flexible working hours are further prerequisites. In addition, the FPÖ
considers income tax splitting important. The party wants to commit itself
to the “strengthening of the freedom of expression” and resort to direct
democracy.
The 2020 program clearly shows the party’s complete lack of inno-
vative ideas indispensable for the commitment of an increasingly critical
FPÖ electorate.
Conclusion and summary

Comparing AfD and FPÖ demonstrates that the thesis of the irreversibly
growing strength of national-populism in Europe does not correspond
with the facts. The 2019 European elections had already shown this.
Since 2015, the AfD learned from the programs, speeches, and strate-
gies of its role model FPÖ. In 2020, however, the AfD is in a much better
political situation than the FPÖ. As chancellor Merkel’s reign is nearing
its end, there are strong internal tensions within the German conservative
camp and the CDU and CSU. The growing strength of the Greens, the
collective dissatisfaction in the new Bundesländer, the unresolved ques-
tion of migration, and the growing threats to the economy favor the
establishment of the AfD in the medium-term. This holds true in spite
of the existing conflict between the three main currents of the party, the
national liberals, the national conservatives, and the völkisch nationals.
In Austria, Sebastian Kurz’s arrival at the head of the ÖVP has revital-
ized the conservatives in an astonishing way. His political talent fascinates
113 https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000113090270/fpoe-praesentiert-ergebnisse-
der-vorstandsklausur. Accessed January 9, 2020.
the observers of Austrian politics. He tamed the Greens with the offer
of making Austria an “ecological model for Europe”.114 The polls show
the electorate’s massive support of this approach. The FPÖ, on the other
hand, is experiencing a crisis that threatens its future, both ideologically
and on the personal level. The leadership of the party is in the midst of a
(still latent and undeclared) leadership war intensifying by the day. Heinz-
Christian Strache, in ambush, set out in search of financing the founding
of a new party that could significantly weaken the FPÖ in the long term.
The legitimacy of a comparative approach and the assertion that the
FPÖ and AfD are “sister parties” show in the ideological, programmatic,
linguistic, and electoral similarities analyzed in this text. Apparatus and
voters of both AfD and FPÖ remain “crusaders of a closed society.”115
The offer of AfD and FPÖ of a German or Austrian “all around defensive”
society, united to resist the ongoing political and social changes, remains
attractive for the segment of the population disoriented and shocked by
immigration. This immigration is perceived as uncontrolled and poten-
tially destructive of the social and economic achievements of the past,
of the German or Austrian identity and its “dominant culture.” Both
AfD and FPÖ are no longer protest parties but political, economic, and
cultural counter-models. Their relation to the history of their countries as
well as their party elites are profoundly different, but the European issue,
migration, security, and the attitude toward Islam determine their present
political and electoral strategies as well as their future.
114 https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-640439.html. Accessed

January 6, 2020.
115 Pascal Perrineau, Les croisée de la société fermée, Paris, L’aube, 2001.
CHAPTER 6
Populism and Religion in the Lega’s Discourse

and Policies
Luca Ozzano
Introduction: An Unlikely Crusader

On 24 February 2018, on a sunny afternoon, the Lega Nord party (now
referred to simply as “Lega,” without the “north” specification, after the
recent nationalist turn) held one of its main pre-electoral rallies in front
of the Milan cathedral. This had always been a common practice for the
party, which always enjoyed a very strong support in the Lombardy region
(which the party currently rules, at the head of a center-right coalition).
However, this rally was far from usual, and in the following days it was
the subject of a great deal of discussion in the Italian media and on social
An earlier version of this contribution was published in 2019 on the The Review
of Faith and International Affairs, with the title “Religion, Cleavages, and
Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Italian Case”.
L. Ozzano (B)
Department of Cultures‚ Politics and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_6
130 L. OZZANO
networks. The reason for this ado was the unusual choice of the party
leader, Matteo Salvini, to address the crowd with a Gospel and a rosary
in his hands. Particularly, at the end of the speech, the Lega’s leader lifted
the Gospel and swore upon it “to be faithful to my people […], to imple-
ment what is foreseen by the Italian Constitution, which some neglect,
and to do it by respecting the teachings included in this sacred Gospel.”1
After that, Salvini invited the Milan people to swear with him before
closing the event. This use of Christian religious symbols for electoral
purposes (which happened again in other events, such as the yearly Lega
meetings in Pontida, and the campaign rallies for the 2019 European
Parliament elections)2 has been deeply criticized not only by the center-
left, but also by members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, who question
Salvini’s use of religious symbols for electoral and partisan ends, and crit-
icize the alleged incongruence between the Gospel’s message and the
Lega’s platform: particularly in terms of attitude toward the migrants
(whose rejection had always been a focus of the party). Salvini replied
to the criticisms, saying that the Gospel does not prescribe to welcome
anybody, in spite of the existence of “five million of poor Italians.” He
was also ironic about the criticisms from the left, whose representatives, in
Salvini’s words, “are angry because they’d rather swear on the Koran.”3
This event, and the following discussion, are quite remarkable if we
consider that the Lega Nord party was once known, at least until the early
2000s, as a movement with a very ambiguous attitude toward Catholi-
cism. Indeed, the party had displayed, at least until the 1990s, very
open anti-clerical stances, and its main yearly meeting in Pontida also
included a neo-pagan ritual with a vial filled with water of the Po (the
main Italian river, crossing most of the Lega’s heartland), addressed by
the Lega leaders as a god.4
1 See the video of this event at https://www.corriere.it/elezioni-2018/notizie/salvini-

dio-po-rosario-svolta-mistica-piazza-duomo-milano-7e485394-198a-11e8-9cdc-0f9bea856
9f6.shtml?refresh_ce-cp (accessed on 27 February 2018).
2 https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/07/01/foto/pontida_lega_salvini_rosa
rio-200555447/1/#1 (accessed on 27 February 2018).
3 Sergio Rame, “Salvini ai vescovi pro immigrati: ‘Il Vangelo non dice di accogliere
tutti’”, Il Giornale, 27 February 2018, http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/sal
vini-ai-vescovi-pro-immigrati-vangelo-non-dice-accogliere-1499061.html (accessed on 27
February 2018).
4 Renzo Guolo, Chi Impugna La Croce. Lega e Chiesa, Roma and Bari: Laterza, 2011;
Duncan McDonnell, “The Lega Nord. The New Saviour of Northern Italy”, in Nadia
6 POPULISM AND RELIGION IN THE LEGA’S DISCOURSE … 131
Indeed, the Lega has undergone a very peculiar mutation in the

past 20 years, since until the early 2000s it was commonly regarded
as a regionalist (and in some political phases secessionist) party. At the
time, it was largely based on the center/periphery cleavage and the crit-
icism toward Rome’s centralism and the allegedly parasitical southern
Italian regions. In the 2000s, however (when the party was part of
the center-right coalition governing Italy between 2001 and 2006 and
between 2008 and 2011), the Lega Nord became very vocal not only
on immigration from Muslim-majority countries, but also on religion-
and morality-related issues such as religious symbols in the public sphere,
medically assisted procreation, and LGBT rights.5 This transformation
culminated in the 2010s, when the new leader of the party, Salvini, gave
it a very strong right-wing turn.6 Although not entirely abandoning the
regionalist rhetoric (especially in the party’s strongholds of Lombardy and
Veneto), the new leader was apparently trying to transform the Lega into
a national right-wing populist movement, on the model of the French
National Rally and the Dutch Party for Freedom (whose leaders Salvini
entertains very friendly relations with). An alignment further emphasized
in the 2018 meeting in Pontida, when Salvini declared his intention
to create “a populist international” for the 2019 European parliament
election, with the ultimate aim to create a “Europe of peoples.”7
Marzouki, Duncan McDonnell, Olivier Roy (eds.), Saving the People. How Populists Hijack
Religion, London: Hurst & Co, 2016, pp. 12–28.
5 Daniele Albertazzi, Duncan McDonnell, “The Lega Nord in the Second Berlusconi
Government: In a League of Its Own”, West European Politics, 28:5, 1 November 2005,
pp. 952–972; Luca Ozzano, Alberta Giorgi, European Culture Wars and the Italian Case:
Which Side Are You On?, London: Routledge, 2016; Luca Ozzano, Alberta Giorgi, “The
Debate on the Crucifix in Public Spaces in Twenty-First Century Italy”, Mediterranean
Politics, 18:2, 2013, pp. 259–275; Luca Ozzano, “Two Forms of Catholicism in Twenty-
First-Century Italian Public Debate: An Analysis of Positions on Same-Sex Marriage and
Muslim Dress Codes”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 21:3, 26 May 2016, pp. 464–
484.
6 Gianluca Passarelli, Dario Tuorto, La Lega di Salvini. Estrema destra di governo,
Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018; Piero Ignazi, I partiti in Italia dal 1945 al 2018, Bologna: Il
Mulino, 2018.
7 Redazione ANSA, “Pontida al via, Salvini: ‘Governeremo 30 anni. In Ue una
Lega delle Leghe’”, ANSA, 2 July 2018, https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cronaca/
2018/07/01/pontida-tutto-pronto-per-raduno-lega.-salvini-debutta-nel-ruolo-di-segret
ario-ministro-e-vicepremier_819625f4-85d6-4840-a042-239f1f28f67d.html (accessed on
16 December 2019).
132 L. OZZANO
This paper argues that this evolution in the Lega Nord’s positions is
not simply a consequence of the shifts in the party’s voting base, or the
strategic choices made by its leaders. On the contrary, it puts forward
the thesis that this change is paradigmatic of a wider change in Euro-
pean political cleavages, which have engendered the crisis of some old
parties, the evolution of others, and the creation of utterly new ones,
which often do not correspond to the parties which formed the western
European party systems until the end of the twentieth century. Particu-
larly, this paper argues that in the new right-wing populist parties such as
the Lega Nord we are witnessing the politicization of a new libertarian-
universalistic vs. traditionalist-communitarian cleavage: which is marked
by a peculiar use of religion and religious symbols which is very different
from that of other Christian parties developed in western Europe in the
twentieth century on the basis of the traditional “religious cleavage.”8
These theoretical considerations, also in relation to the broader approach
of the book, will be the focus of the first part of this contribution. The
following section will deal with the Lega Nord case, with a short intro-
duction on the party, and an analysis of its positions on four “sensitive”
issues: immigration, religious symbols in the public sphere, LGBT rights,
and bioethics. A separate account of the Lega’s behavior and the policies
it proposed during its 15 months in power between 2018 and 2019 will
follow. The concluding remarks will try to assess what this case implies
for the study of cleavages, religion, and populist political parties, and for
the broader transformation of the European political landscape.
Methodologically, the analysis of the Lega case will be mainly based
on the databases of newspaper articles gathered by the author and by Dr.
Alberta Giorgi for their works9 on the Italian debates on religion-related
issues (2025 articles between 1999 and 2013) and on the discussion on
Italy’s law on same-sex unions (623 articles between 2014 and 2016).
8 Ozzano, “Two Forms of Catholicism in Twenty-First-Century Italian Public Debate”.

9 Ozzano, Giorgi, European Culture Wars and the Italian Case; Ozzano, Giorgi, “The
Debate on the Crucifix in Public Spaces in Twenty-First Century Italy”; Luca Ozzano,
“The Debate About Same-Sex Marriages/Civil Unions in Italy’s 2006 and 2013 Electoral
Campaigns”, Contemporary Italian Politics, 7:2, 4 May 2015, pp. 144–160; Ozzano,
“Two Forms of Catholicism in Twenty-First-Century Italian Public Debate”.
Populism, Cleavages, and Religion

The case of the Lega surely fits in the definition of populism provided
by Mudde and Kaltwasser and adopted as a framework for this book.
According to the two authors, populism is “a thin-centered ideology
that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous
and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and
which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale
(general will) of the people.”10 However, this contribution is based on the
idea that the above-mentioned definition is necessary but not sufficient
to define European right-wing populist parties such as the Lega. This
is because, in Brubaker’s words, the opposition between the people and
the elite is just the “vertical” dimension of populism; however, the “hor-
izontal” one, based on the opposition “between insiders and outsiders
[…] who are said to threaten our way of life,”11 must not be neglected.
This latter dimension, which particularly focuses on the hostility toward
immigrants and immigrant faiths, has been indeed highlighted by most
studies of the populist and radical rights developed in Europe since the
late twentieth century.12 Therefore, the definition proposed by Alber-
tazzi and McDonnell seems more suitable to the case: “an ideology
which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and
dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting
to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, iden-
tity and voice.”13 This paper will show how Salvini and the Lega have
10 Cas Mudde, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 6.
11 Rogers Brubaker, “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism: The European Populist
Moment in Comparative Perspective”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40:8, 21 June 2017,
p. 1192.
12 Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, Springer, 1994;
Hans-Georg Betz, “Populism and Islamophobia”, in Reinhard Heinisch, Christina Holtz-
Bacha, Oscar Mazzoleni (eds.), Political Populism. A Handbook, Baden-Baden: Nomos
Verlagsgesellschaft, 2017; Piero Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe, Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003; Simon Bornschier, “The New Cultural
Divide and the Two-Dimensional Political Space in Western Europe”, West European
Politics, 33:3, 1 May 2010, pp. 419–444; Daniele Albertazzi, Duncan Mcdonnell (eds.),
Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Houndmills,
Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
13 Daniele Albertazzi, Duncan Mcdonnell, “Introduction: The Sceptre and the Spec-
tre”, in Daniele Albertazzi, Duncan Mcdonnell (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The
134 L. OZZANO
managed to dramatically increase their share of votes by capitalizing on

both axes, by casting themselves simultaneously as the representatives of
the Italian people versus both the establishment and the “threatening
others” coming from outside.
Another factor that this contribution aims to point out is the fact that
in the Lega discourse a primary role is played by the religious factor.
This is however a use of religion, religious values, and religious symbols
which is very different from that of “traditional” centrist and Christian-
democratic parties. This contribution is based on the idea that this is
a consequence of the peculiar cleavage politics of the Lega and other
right-wing populist parties, which is no longer based on the so-called
“religious” or “Churches vs. State” cleavage—developed as a consequence
of the formation of national states in Europe—but on a new one. This
latter, developed as a consequence of the “silent revolution”14 of the
1960s and 1970s, and the rift between winners and losers of globalization
and Europeanization processes,15 is focused on the “opposition between
libertarian-universalistic and traditionalist-communitarian values.”16
In this context, the role of an identity-driven and civilizational concep-
tion of religion—focused not on beliefs and practices, but on the
strengthening of the identity of the insiders, in opposition to the threat-
ening others—becomes crucial. A perspective that, as already mentioned
above, has been labeled by scholars as the “horizontal” or “us vs. them”
dimension of populism. However, as observed by Brubaker, European
right-wing populist parties seem to oscillate between a “traditional,”
Spectre of Western European Democracy, Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007, p. 3.
14 Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among
Western Publics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977; Ronald Inglehart, Chris-
tian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development
Sequence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
15 Hanspeter Kriesi, “Restructuration of Partisan Politics and the Emergence of a New
Cleavage Based on Values”, West European Politics, 33:3, 1 May 2010, pp. 673–685;
Hanspeter Kriesi et al., West European Politics in the Age of Globalization, Cambridge,
UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008; Piero Ignazi, “The Silent
Counter-Revolution”, European Journal of Political Research, 22:1, 1992, pp. 3–34;
Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe; Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, “Cleavage
Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage”, Journal
of European Public Policy, 25:1, 2 January 2018, pp. 109–135.
16 Bornschier, “The New Cultural Divide and the Two-Dimensional Political Space in
Western Europe”, p. 434.
patriarchal vision of society focused on a conservative interpretation of

Christianity; and an idea of Western Europe as marked out (in oppo-
sition to an allegedly illiberal Islam) by respect for personal liberties:
which means including in the parties’ platforms stances inspired by
“philosemitism, gender equality, and support for gay rights,” although
these latter are often advocated selectively in anti-Islamic perspective
rather than as absolute principles.17 The dilemma, thus, is between a
model of party anchored to “traditional” Christian values, with a conser-
vative orientation toward gender issues, sexual morality, and personal
rights; and another where Christianity mainly plays the role of an identity
marker in the context of a conflict-oriented relation with other cultures,
and does not prevent the development of more open discourses on gender
roles and individual rights.
The rest of this contribution will analyse the case of the Lega, to
understand toward which of the two sub-models the party seems to be
oriented.
The Lega Nord and Its Positions

The Lega Nord party was created officially in 1989 as the federation of
several regionalist parties and groups from the northern Italian regions,
marked by a separatist attitude toward the Italian state or, in any case,
demanding the transformation of Italy into a federal state with wide
autonomy for regions. Their targets were, particularly, Rome’s bureau-
cracy and the southern Italian regions (whose citizens had flocked toward
the northern Italian industrial areas during the 1960s and the 1970s)
both seen as backward, parasitic, and inefficient. The federation grad-
ually turned into an institutionalized party based in all the northern
Italian regions, which in the 1990s repeatedly advocated the separation
of northern Italy from the rest of the country.18
It was only during the 2000s, when the party participated in two
coalition governments under the leadership of the tycoon Silvio Berlus-
coni, that anti-Muslim immigration became the main focal point of the
Lega (which previously had mostly lamented immigration from southern
17 Brubaker, “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism”, p. 1203.

18 Roberto Biorcio, La rivincita del Nord. La Lega dalla contestazione al governo, Roma
and Bari: Laterza, 2010.
136 L. OZZANO
Italy). In the 2001–2006 legislature, when the country was again ruled
by the center-right, the party also started (in the context of a broader
pro-identity turn of the whole coalition) to be engaged on moral and
sexuality-related issues, with positions marked by a conservative and
communitarian Christian view.19 This evolution culminated in 2013 with
the rise to power within the party of Matteo Salvini, a young leader
who reoriented the party toward Italian nationalism, and completed its
transition toward a fully fledged right-wing populist party model.20
The following is a review of the main Lega Nord positions on some
sensitive issues, whose discussion is often related to religious values,
between 2000 and 2019 (with a separate paragraph for the Lega’s
participation in the Conte government, between 2018 and 2019).
Immigration and Religious Pluralism

As mentioned above, the party has always been hostile toward any form of
immigration, starting from the waves from the southern Italian regions in
the 1960s and 1970s. Since the 1990s, however, the rhetoric of the party
leaders mainly escalated in relation to immigration from Muslim-majority
countries, with the frequent use of expressions such as “Muslim inva-
sion” or “Islamic virus.” For example, in 2005, a party official declared
(in the Lega’s official newspaper, La Padania) that “all the terrorists who
have spread death and terror among our people, and the murderers in
our towns and cities, and many girl rapists are coward and fundamen-
talist Muslims.”21 In other cases, Muslim immigration was likened to a
“dangerous virus” whose spread must be prevented, in order to preserve
the Christian identity of “Padania.”22 In this “invasion” frame, Christian
identity was therefore defined by the party representatives as a “shield”
protecting Europe from both Muslim immigration and the secularized
19 Ozzano, Giorgi, European Culture Wars and the Italian Case; Albertazzi, McDonnell,
“The Lega Nord in the Second Berlusconi Government”.
20 Passarelli, Tuorto, La Lega di Salvini. Estrema destra di governo.
21 La Padania, “Pene Più Severe a Chi Indossa Il Burqa”, La Padania, 30 July 2005.
22 Paolo Berizzi, “La Lega Torna in Piazza Contro Le ‘Mamme Col Velo’”, La
Repubblica, 3 October 2006.
European elites.23 Such positions have sometimes clashed with the offi-
cial stances of the Catholic Church, oriented toward a more inclusive
approach toward migrants. The Lega Nord representatives have also often
not refrained from attacking those prelates, such as Archbishop Tetta-
manzi of Milan, who were regarded as too friendly toward the Muslim
community. For example, the party representatives, and the rest of the
center-right coalition, harshly criticized the prelate in 2008 when he
intervened in the debate on the construction of new mosques in Milan
supporting the idea of “places of worship in every neighbourhood.”24
In terms of public policies, wherever the party was involved in national
or local administrations, its representatives regularly tried to approve laws
and regulations to prevent Muslims from building places of worship and
from celebrating their festivals, as well as to ban headscarves and Islamic
ritual slaughtering, just to mention the main issues. In relation to places
of worship, particularly, the party has always tried to approve laws making
more difficult the construction and the opening of new mosques and
Muslim prayer rooms, and has often demanded—particularly after the
main jihadist terrorist attacks in Europe—the closure of the existing ones.
The most discussed piece of legislation promoted by the Lega in this
domain was probably a regional law approved by the Lombardy admin-
istration in 2015 (and later imitated by Veneto, also ruled by the party),
which included many technical provisions aiming at complicating the
opening of non-Christian places of worship (such as for example the obli-
gation to provide parking lots next to the new places of worship, and to
install cameras permitting the police to monitor the entrance doors).25
Religious Symbols in the Public Sphere

This field of debate reveals very clearly the exclusivist and communi-
tarian attitude of the party, which throughout the 2000s was very vocal
in opposing Muslim religious symbols such as headscarves and in trying
to pass legislation banning them from schools and other public spaces,
23 Giuseppe Reguzzoni, “L’occidente Ha Solo Radici Cristiane,” La Padania, 14

October 2009.
24 Zita Dazzi, “Tettamanzi: Una moschea in ogni quartiere Ma il Sindaco Moratti
sconfessa l’arcivescovo”, La Repubblica, 6 December 2008.
25 Alberta Giorgi, Religioni di minoranza tra Europa e laicità locale, Bologna: Mimesis
edizioni, 2018.
138 L. OZZANO
at the national and the local level.26 Even before the 2005 French law
banning ostensible religious symbols from public schools, which sparked
a major wave of debates throughout Europe, the Lega Nord local admin-
istrations had already begun to enact bans against integral Muslim veils
covering women’s faces, and other garments such as “burkinis” in public
pools. In the late 2000s, the party was one of the main sponsors of a draft
bill (ultimately not approved by the parliament only because of the end of
the Berlusconi government in 2011) aiming at banning full Muslim veils
(hiding women’s faces), such as the burqa, at the national level.27
On the other hand, in the same years, the Lega Nord representa-
tives were at the forefront of the battle to preserve crucifixes in Italian
public schools, after a controversial sentence of the European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR) which in November 2009 had banned them
(to be reverted by another ECHR sentence in March 2011, after a very
strong lobbying activity carried out by the Italian government).28 Already
in 2002, the party had submitted to the Italian parliament a draft law
aiming at making the crucifix compulsory not only in schools, but also in
all public offices, as “an essential part of the historical and cultural heritage
of our country” and as a “symbol uniting all European countries.”29 The
party representatives blamed Muslims for an alleged attempt to remove
Christian symbols from the public sphere (an Italian convert to Islam,
Adel Smith, had indeed promoted a campaign against the crucifix in the
early 2000s, although with little success), but also an “hyper-secular, anti-
identitarian and relativist drift […] aiming at erasing from the culture
of our youth every trace of our history.”30 This rhetoric, mainly aimed
against the EU’s alleged secularist attitude, escalated in the late 2000s
after the above-mentioned ECHR sentence, with the party portraying
26 Sabrina Pastorelli, “Religious Dress Code: The Italian Case”, in Silvio Ferrari,
Sabrina Pastorelli (eds.), Religion in Public Spaces. A European Perspective, Farnham
and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 235–254; Sara Silvestri, “Comparing Burqa
Debates in Europe: Sartorial Styles, Religious Prescriptions and Political Ideologies”, in
Silvio Ferrari, Sabrina Pastorelli (eds.), Religion in Public Spaces. A European Perspective,
Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 275–292.
27 Ozzano, Giorgi, European Culture Wars and the Italian Case.
29 Alessandro Zangrando, “Crocefisso alle pareti obbligatorio per legge”, Il Giornale,
15 May 2002.
30 La Padania, “Moratti: Nelle scuole soltanto il crocifisso”, 25 September 2003.
the court’s decision as “the victory of absolute relativism,” and “Europe

giving up its own defence.”31
These debates, in sum, clearly demonstrated how religious symbols
were connected, in the Lega Nord worldview, to an exclusivist idea of
public spaces, where Christian symbols are the signifiers of the commu-
nity’s identity, and the western/Christian civilization, while all other
religious symbols are unacceptable.32
LGBT Rights
In 2016 Italy was the last Western European country to approve a law
legalizing same-sex unions. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, during
the long discussions that preceded the approval of that law (particularly
before and after the 2006 and 2013 parliamentary elections), the Lega
Nord always was one of the most vocal opponents of any kind of recog-
nition of same-sex partnerships and, more broadly, LGBT rights (also
in relation to a draft law aiming at specifically punishing homophobic
crimes). Although this opposition was common to other center-right and
centrist parties (and even to some Catholic factions within the center-left),
it stood out for the choice of a deliberately politically incorrect language,
not only targeting same-sex unions as an institution, but also slurring
homosexual people as individuals.33 This happened through the use, for
example, of insulting jargon words such as culattoni or finocchi to define
the LGBT community, and even jokes involving references to sexual prac-
tices.34 This opposition to same-sex unions was often explicitly framed in
religious terms by the party representatives: the Chamber’s vice-president
Calderoli, for example, justified his position by saying that “the good God
made us with different qualities: man and woman.”35
31 Igor Iezzi, “Ci tolgono il crocefisso dalle scuole!”, La Padania, 4 November 2009.
32 Ozzano, Giorgi, “The Debate on the Crucifix in Public Spaces in Twenty-First
Century Italy”.
33 Ozzano, “The Debate About Same-Sex Marriages/Civil Unions in Italy’s 2006
and 2013 Electoral Campaigns”; Ozzano, “Two Forms of Catholicism in Twenty-First-
Century Italian Public Debate”.
34 See for example La Stampa, 1 July 2005; La Padania, 25 April 2005 and 22
September 2005.
35 La Repubblica, 4 September 2005.
140 L. OZZANO
It is true, however, that in the latter stages of the debate the party
representatives somewhat moderated their tones, and the new leader,
Salvini, even declared that he was ready to accept some kind of legal
recognition of LGBT couples (in line with a broader shift toward the
acceptance of some basic LGBT rights—which was part of a Western
European cultural dynamics since the mid-2000s36 —undertaken by most
of the Italian political spectrum, and sectors of the Catholic Church itself)
although still defending marriage solely between man and woman.37 It is
not clear the reason for such a shift, considering the homophobic posi-
tions previously displayed by Salvini’s party: it might be a consequence of
the intention to move toward the center of the political field, or an influ-
ence of other European right-wing populist parties that in the 2010s also
have softened their tones on this issue, for example, France’s Rassemble-
ment National. In any case, this did not prevent the party representatives
from strongly opposing the Cirinnà bill on the legalization of same-sex
unions throughout the parliamentary and public discussion between 2014
and 2016, when the law was approved.
Bioethics, Beginning of Life, End of Life

On matters related to bioethics, stem cell research, abortion, and
euthanasia, the Lega Nord has always stood out for its defence of
conservative Catholic positions. This implied opposing any new, “lib-
eral” legislation on these matters and supporting a revision of the existing
laws aiming, for example, at limiting the possibility of access to abor-
tion.38 The Lega has also always been an opponent of the legalization of
euthanasia, with an alignment on the Church’s positions on the issue.39 In
2004, the party was among the sponsors of a law which strongly limited
the access to medically assisted procreation and the possibility to carry out
36 Roman Kuhar, “Use of the Europeanization Frame in Same-Sex Partnership Issues

Across Europe”, in Emanuela Lombardo, Maxime Forest (eds.), The Europeanization of
Gender Equality Policies: A Discursive-Sociological Approach, Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave, 2010, pp. 168–191; David Paternotte, Kelly Kollman, “Regulating Intimate
Relationships in the European Polity: Same-Sex Unions and Policy Convergence”, Social
Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 26 March 2013.
37 La Repubblica and Il Giornale, 23 May 2015.
39 La Padania, 5 April 2002; Il Secolo d’Italia, 29 November 2008.
stem cell research, and among the opponents to a subsequent referendum

to ban the law promoted by the Radical Party. This position was framed
not only in terms of protection of the weakest (the embryo), but also in
terms of identity, because, in the words of a TV commentator very close
to the party, “Islam makes children while the West does abortions.”40
In 2017, Salvini, during a radio interview, explicitly defined abortion
as a homicide, and, although declaring that he would not try to abro-
gate the law legalizing it, he said that he aimed at limiting its use as
much as possible.41 The Lega Nord-led local administrations also tried
to boycott the implementation of legislation and regulations about abor-
tion and contraception, for example trying to obstruct the distribution of
the RU486 pill in the public hospitals of the Piedmont region.42
These issues are indeed not rarely interpreted by the Lega repre-
sentatives in the framework of a thesis commonly known as “peoples
substitution.” According to this conspiracy theory—which is somewhat
parallel to the “gender thesis” in the field of LGBT rights—the European
liberal elites allegedly aim at reducing the birth rates of European peoples
and at the same time at facilitating immigration, in order to substitute
the European population and Christianity with cheap-labor immigrants
and multicultural identity. Salvini, for example, openly denounced a “dis-
crimination” and even an operation of “ethnic cleansing” coordinated by
Europe against the Italian population.43 In 2016, after Pope Francis’s
decision to soften the rules about absolution of people who have under-
gone abortion, Salvini talked about “a civilization going to die” because
of the Pope’s alleged progressivism, the abandon of Christian traditions,
and the welcoming of immigrants.44
40 Gianluigi Paragone, “L’Islam fa i figli, l’Europa l’aborto”, La Padania, 25 October

2006.
41 Il Secolo d’Italia, 15 February 2017.
42 Sara Strippoli, “Aborto, contro la RU486: La lascerò nei magazzini”, La Repubblica,
1st April 2010.
43 See for example Il Corriere della Sera, 17 February 2015 (the video at https://
video.corriere.it/salvini-padani-vittime-pulizia-etnica/e3a5216a-b69e-11e4-a17f-176fb2
d476c2); Il Manifesto, 6 February 2018;
44 Sergio Rame, “Aborto, Salvini attacca il Papa: ‘E’ una civiltà che va a morire’”,
Il Giornale, 22 November 2016 http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/aborto-salvini-
attacca-papa-civilt-che-va-morire-1334840.html (accessed on 16 December 2019).
142 L. OZZANO
The Lega in Power

As mentioned above, since the very beginning the Lega Nord’s platform
was strongly based on a communitarian worldview which opposed immi-
gration. However, until the early 2010s, the party focused on a regionalist
identity, which opposed immigration from abroad and from Southern
Italy alike and put forward claims for autonomy and—in some polit-
ical phases—secession for the northern Italian regions. It was only at
the end of 2013, after a harsh defeat in that year’s parliamentary elec-
tions (with the party garnering only 4% of the votes, also a consequence
of financial scandals involving it) that the election of Matteo Salvini as
the new party Secretary engendered a revolution for the party. Particu-
larly, the new leader decided to drop the anti-southern rhetoric (although
the party did not abandon autonomy projects for the northern regions)
and to transform the Lega (now without the “Nord” specification) into a
nationwide nationalist party. The party’s opposition to immigration, espe-
cially when involving people from Muslim-majority countries, became
thus more openly framed in terms of defence of the national commu-
nity and values: which, in international terms, also implied a Eurosceptic
position. This latter in some political phases was marked by a “hard
Euroscepticism” approach, with the idea that Italy should opt out of
the European Union and/or the Euro; in other phases, especially during
coalition governments, by a softer approach, simply demanding a revision
of European treaties and Italy’s obligations toward the EU.45 More-
over, Salvini strongly supported an alignment with the other right-wing
populist parties in countries like France, Hungary, The Netherlands, and
Austria.
This change proved successful, with the Lega rising to over 17% of the
votes in 2018 and forming a government coalition with the Five Star
movement (an officially post-political, grassroots-based populist move-
ment created in the late 2000s by comedian Beppe Grillo). During the
15 months of this government (which fell in September 2019 to be
replaced by a new cabinet supported by the Five Star Movement and
the Democratic Party) the main policy courses pursued by the Lega
45 Marco Brunazzo, Mark Gilbert, “Insurgents Against Brussels: Euroscepticism and

the Right-Wing Populist Turn of the Lega Nord Since 2013”, Journal of Modern Italian
Studies, 22:5, 20 October 2017, pp. 624–641; Albertazzi, McDonnell, “The Lega Nord
in the Second Berlusconi Government”.
were twofold. On the one hand, also thanks to Salvini’s appointment

as Minister of the Interior, the government operated a tight grip on
illegal immigration (also through the approval of two very controversial
security-related decrees). On the other, it proposed an economic policy
based on a radical tax cuts program (which was never approved) but also
some “welfare Chauvinism”-inspired46 measures, for example, in relation
to retirement age. Quite evidently, although the two courses of action
were strictly intertwined, the former was mainly focused on the horizontal
axis of populism, while the second aimed at exploiting the vertical one,
also in opposition to the European institutions and the center-left elites
implementing their rules.
In relation to the above-reviewed sensitive issues, and more broadly
to values- and identity-related policies, in this political phase the party
pursued an ambiguous line. On the one hand, it mainly kept its focus on
immigration as a security and economic issue, increasingly refraining from
framing it in anti-Islamic perspective, as the party had done in the 2000s.
Moreover—also considering his position as Minister of Interior—Salvini
gave to the issue of immigration an absolute priority, blocking the Italian
ports and engaging in very harsh attacks against NGOs saving immigrant
by sea. In this context, immigrants were portrayed as a threat to the Ital-
ians’ security and/or parasites unfairly benefiting of the Italian welfare
system, and the NGOs operators as speculators on immigrants’ tragedies.
With immigration as the first priority Salvini and his party appeared
less focused on interreligious relations, and sexuality and morality issues.
Salvini also made clear, at the time of the formation of the government,
that abortion- and LGBT rights-related issues were not in the govern-
ment platform and would not be addressed by the cabinet).47 The tones
also changed, with a more politically correct language—at least from the
national leaders of the party—than in the 2000s, in relation both to
gender and religious minorities.
On the other hand, notwithstanding the official statements and tones,
the Lega seemed not to reorient its positions. In relation to Islam,
this is shown, for example, by a further tightening of the Lombardy
46 Gijs Schumacher, Kees van Kersbergen, “Do Mainstream Parties Adapt to the Welfare
Chauvinism of Populist Parties?”, Party Politics, 22:3, 1 May 2016, pp. 300–312.
47 See Il Sole 24 Ore, Salvini: «No alla revisione di leggi del passato, dall’aborto alle
unioni civili», 2 June 2018, https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/salvini-no-revisione-leggi-
passato-dall-aborto-unioni-civili-AEYMuJzE (accessed on 16 December 2019).
144 L. OZZANO
region’s regulations on non-Christian places of worship,48 which had

been imitated also by the center-right led Veneto and Liguria. In relation
to morality politics, the most striking event was probably, in March 2019,
the organization in Verona (a cradle of right-wing Catholicism) of the
controversial World Congress of Families: a meeting of pro-family orga-
nization from throughout the world, where strongly anti-abortion and
anti-LGBT rights positions were expressed. This event, officially endorsed
by the Ministry of the Family, also listed as speakers Salvini, the Minister
of the Family Fontana, and the Minister of Education Bussetti.
The most controversial of Salvini’s religion-related stances was however
his use of religious symbols. The introduction to this paper has already
shown the public use of symbols such as the rosary and the Gospel
during Salvini’s campaign for the 2018 elections. The same choice was
made during the following year’s campaign for the European Parliament
elections, when a peculiarly ultra-conservative Catholic stance was also
made clear by his choice of words, when he declared during a rally: “I
entrust my life and yours to the immaculate heart of Mary, that will
lead us to victory.” Salvini used this very rhetoric—which by the way is
at odds with his personal life choices, as a divorced man who has had
very discussed affairs with a well-known tv anchor, and with the daughter
of one of Silvio Berlusconi’s main aides—also in many speeches held in
August 2019, when he decided to withdraw the Lega’s support to the
government. In this circumstance, the President of the Council of Minis-
ters, Giuseppe Conte, publicly rebuked the Lega leader for this behavior
during a parliamentary session. Although the Catholic Church did not
display unanimous feelings, many high-level prelates, such as the Presi-
dent of the Conference of the Italian Bishops (CEI), Gualtiero Bassetti,
also heavily criticized Salvini, both for his allegedly inappropriate use
of religious symbols for political partisan ends, and for his positions on
immigration.49
48 Alberto Giannoni, “Regione, nuova stretta sulle moschee”, Il Giornale, 12

September 2018, https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/milano/regione-nuova-stretta-sulle-mos
chee-1574946.html (accessed on 16 December 2019).
49 See for example Marco Politi, “Salvini invoca la Madonna e attacca il Papa. Ma
il mondo cattolico non combatte abbastanza”, Il Fatto Quotidiano, 20 May 2019,
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2019/05/20/salvini-invoca-la-madonna-e-attacca-il-
papa-ma-il-mondo-cattolico-non-combatte-abbastanza/5192762/; Libero Quotidiano,
“Papa Francesco, durissimo attacco del cardinale Müller: ‘Bestiale attaccare Matteo
Salvini sugli immigrati’”, 28 May 2019, https://www.liberoquotidiano.it/news/italia/
13467024/papa-francesco-cardinale-gerhard-muller-papa-francesco-bestiale-condanna-mat
teo-salvini.html (accessed on 16 December 2019).
Concluding Remarks
The first section of this contribution has reviewed the literature on cleav-
ages to support the thesis of a new use of religion, in the context
of the politicization of a new cultural cleavage, defined by Born-
schier “libertarian-universalistic vs. traditionalist-communitarian.” This
later seems to be the crossover of two dynamics: one cultural and ideolog-
ical, related to the conservative reaction against the postmaterialist turn
of the left after the 1960s; and one focused on the civilizational defence
of a (real or imagined) traditional community against change processes
brought about by globalization, Europeanization, and immigration. This
cleavage has produced new conflicts related to ethical issues and interre-
ligious coexistence, which previously did not exist (or in any case were
framed differently by most actors involved) and prompted the creation
and growth of a new family of right-wing populist parties.
The second part of the paper has shown that the Lega’s positions are
fully coherent with this hypothesis: indeed, its exclusivist view of society
and the use of Christianity as an identity marker rather than a set of
beliefs and practices (even in relation to issues apparently scarcely related
to civilizational struggles such as bioethics) have been rather coherent
throughout the 2000s and 2010s; and, if any change is detectable, they
have increased in the latest years after the leadership change.
As for the tenets of the version of Christian identity put forward by
European right-wing populist parties we have also seen in the theoret-
ical section that they might be partly changing, with the development
of new trends within some parties, including more open discourses on
gender roles and personal rights, also as a consequence of the criticism
of Islam and its alleged anti-liberalism. The review of the Lega’s posi-
tion has shown that some changes in this direction, in rhetorical if not
in policy terms, were detectable in the 2010s, with a partial softening
of the very openly politically incorrect tones previously adopted (particu-
larly in relation to Muslims and homosexuals). However, Salvini’s choice
to openly and repeatedly use a religious rhetoric and religious symbols
during the past two years—even during his terms as Minister of Interior—
ultimately seems to signal the choice of a conservative Christian model of
right-wing populism, rather than a secular and pro-civil rights one. This
orientation—particularly after the party returned to the ranks of parlia-
mentary opposition—might result in a new season of civilizational and
identity-driven battles.
146 L. OZZANO
As for the meaning of the Lega’s evolution and success under Salvini’s
leadership for the wider discussion on European right-wing populism, we
can say first that it represents a successful case of a political engineering
project which had transformed in a few years a regionalist party with an
ambiguous attitude toward religion into a nationalist and populist party
casting itself as the defender of Italy’s Christian identity. This latter point
isn’t probably the main reason for the success of the party—which is due
to a very clever exploitation of both the horizontal and the vertical axes of
populism, which allows the party to cater to different basins of votes, from
the nationalist right to the Catholic center to the social left. However,
the symbolic and devotional use of religion made by Salvini has probably
been very relevant in this strategy, by anchoring the party to Italy’s most
cherished values and hijacking them for the Lega’s electoral purposes.
CHAPTER 7
Populist Rhetorics: A Linguistic Analysis

of a “Mentality” of Italian Politics
in Republican Italy
Loredana Ruccella
Isaiah Berlin whose task was to close the first major symposium on
populism—To Define Populism—held in 1967 at the London School
of Economics in London, said that political science, when it comes to
dealing with populism, suffers from the “Cinderella complex.”1
[…] that there exists a shoe – the word “populism” – for which somewhere
there must exist a foot. There are all kinds of feet which it nearly fits, but
we must not be trapped by these nearly-fitting feet. The prince is always
wandering about with the shoe; and somewhere, we feel sure, there awaits
it a limb called pure populism. This is the nucleus of populism, its essence.
All other populisms are derivations of it, deviations from it and variants
1 I. Berlin, To Define Populism, The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library, 2013, p. 6.
L. Ruccella (B)
Laboratoire BABEL EA 2649, Université de Toulon, La Garde, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_7
148 L. RUCCELLA
of it, but somewhere there lurks true, perfect populism, which may have
lasted only six months, or [occurred] in only one place. That is the idea
of Platonic populism, all the others being dilutions of it or perversions of
it. I do not think that this approach would be very useful, but this is what
all persons pursue who think that words have fixed meanings, particularly
in historical and sociological subjects. I do not know whether anyone here
does so. We must not, I suggest, be tempted in that direction.2
This not only reveals the difficulty of proposing a standard definition

of the term populism, but Berlin’s words sound like a warning against
the temptation to devote body and soul to what the British philosopher
considers to be an approach that would not be very useful. Thus, today,
more than fifty years after its creation, this successful metaphor often
occupies the forefront in many scientific works dealing with populism.
Nevertheless, as the Italian political scientist Marco Tarchi notes, “the
reasonableness of such a warning and the authority of the person who
formulated it have contributed to slowing down efforts to give populism
an exhaustive definition shared by the entire scientific community.”3
Indeed, despite the countless studies conducted on this subject since the
symposium To Define Populism, a certain ambiguity remains around the
meaning of the sign populism.
It is as a result of these considerations that, as a linguist, I will
proceed, in the first part of this work, with a semantic analysis of this
sign with the objective of clarifying its definitional contours and thus
limiting the amalgam which, on the one hand, involves negative value
judgments because the amalgam “has pragmatic scope of disqualifica-
tion”4 and, on the other hand, complicates the understanding of the
populist phenomenon because this process could probably have supported
the use of the sign populism as an all-purpose word,5 often used to talk
2 Ibidem.
3 Tarchi, M., “Un prince et une chaussure: où est-elle la princesse?; le ‘complexe de
Cendrillon’ dans la science politique cinquante ans après”, Studia Politica: Romanian
Political Science Review, 2017, p. 491.
4 S. Matar, A. Chauvin-Vileno, “Islamalgame, discours représenté et responsabilité énon-
ciative”, in A. Rabatel, A. Chauvin-Vileno, Enonciation et responsabilité dans les médias,
Semen n° 22, Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006, p. 112.
5 In this regard, it is worth noting that Isaiah Berlin, at the London conference, issued
a warning. He said: “At the same time, we must not be tempted in the other direction,
which some have taken, to suppose that the word ‘populism’ is simply a homonym; that
7 POPULIST RHETORICS: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS … 149
about political realities (ideas, politicians, movements, parties…) which,

at a given time and in a certain context, have been considered disturbing.
Once I have clarified the meaning I assign to the term populism, I will
examine, in the second part of my work, the rhetorical strategies through
which some Italian leaders express their own “populist vein.” In order to
examine this, I shall analyse a corpus of written and oral speeches, extracts
from books published by these politicians and from their interventions in
the media and in the social media.
Semantic Analysis of the Sign Populism

In order to examine the sign populism from a semantic perspective I
will, first of all, attempt to analyse the equivalences and the opposi-
tional relations—in terms of the presence or absence of common semantic
traits—that this sign maintains with its so-called6 hypernyms (for instance,
ideology, political style, demagogy, and antipolitics). To carry out this
type of analysis, it is necessary to identify, within the academic and non-
academic discursive productions, the linguistic signs most frequently used
to define populism, in order to highlight the different meanings to which
this sign applies. Indeed, we can distinguish two recurring meanings of
this term: one being “ideology” or “thin-centered ideology,” the other
being “political style.”
Considering the first meaning, defining populism as an ideology can
bring out semantic problems; thus, if we pay attention to semic analysis
of the two signs, we can observe that the semantic content contained
there are movements in America, in Russia, in the Balkans and in Africa, that they are
all called populism owing to confusions in human heads, but that they have too little in
common; their differences are far greater than their similarities; and that therefore nothing
but confusion can be sown by using these general descriptions, and we must try to fit
seven, eight or nine perfectly precise terms to all these different things, which have little
in common, and this may clarify thought. Yet I also have a feeling that whenever a word
is much used, even if it is an exceedingly confusing or over-rich word, like ‘romanticism’,
‘idealism’, ‘populism’, ‘democracy’ and so on, something real is intended, something, not
quite nothing. There is a sense in which one should look for the common core”, in Isaiah
Berlin, op. cit., p. 7.
6 We speak of “so-called hypernyms” because their hypernymic value is related to certain
uses in speech. In other words, the intensive use of the term populism in the sphere of
political communication has fostered a “process of hyponymization” of the sign populism
by giving it, in and through speeches, the same sememe as other linguistic signs; this has
generated a hypo–hyperonymic relationship between the former and the latter.
150 L. RUCCELLA
in the sign ideology does not correspond to that which is conveyed by

the sign populism. In order to clarify this, it is necessary to identify the
semantic traits that constitute the semic core (the invariant of meaning)
of the sign ideology and to relate them to those that form the semic
core of the sign populism. The sememe (meaning) of the sign ideology is
composed of some major denotative semes, among which “have a formal
and coherent doctrine,” “have an organizational project of society and
State,” “have a specific identity,” “have a cultural dimension,” “have an
emotional and mythical component,” and “action-oriented.” However,
two of these semes only—“action-oriented” and “having an emotional
and mythical component”—are found in the sememe of the sign populism.
Yet, is this sufficient to define populism as an ideology, even in the limited
sense, proposed by Cas Mudde, of “thin-centred ideology”?7
I do think that the answer to this is negative because considering the
sign populism as an hyponym of the sign ideology or of the syntagm
thin-centered ideology would mean, on the one hand, attributing to
it some denotative semes of which it is devoid, and, on the other
hand, actualizing in discourse its connotative semes (morpheme - ism,
for example, could give the sign populism the virtual semic trait “ide-
ology” because it is present in the signs referring to all the major
ideologies of the twentieth century8 ). The meaning determined by the
actualization of connotative semes is nevertheless “relatively unstable,
virtual, situational, even individual”9 and it modifies the semantic rela-
tionship between the signs populism and ideology. Indeed, if linguistically
these two signs, having some common semantic traits, can be grouped
7 “Though populism is a distinct ideology, it does not possess ‘the same level of intel-
lectual refinement and consistency’ as, for example, socialism or liberalism. Populism
is only a ‘thin-centred ideology’, exhibiting ‘a restricted core attached to a narrower
range of political concepts’. The core concept of populism is obviously ‘the people’; in
a sense, even the concept of ‘the elite’ takes its identity from it (being its opposite, its
nemesis). As a thin-centred ideology, populism can be easily combined with very different
(thin and full) other ideologies, including communism, ecologism, nationalism or social-
ism”, C. Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, in Government and Opposition, Hoboken:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, p. 544.
8 Cf. K. D. Bracher, The Age of Ideologies: A History of Political Thought in the Twentieth
Century, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984.
9 L. Depecker, Entre signe et concept: éléments de terminologie générale, Paris: Presses
Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002, p. 45.
together in the same lexical field—that of politics—without, neverthe-

less, maintaining a specific semantic relationship, on the discourse level
they maintain a hypo/hypernyms relationship. Given the negative conno-
tation—also encouraged by the fortune of the Marxist interpretation10
of this concept—of which the sign ideology is often loaded, this type of
relationship could and can still facilitate the emergence of negative value
judgments referring to the sign populism.
Considering, now, the sign populism in its political style sense, I
encounter the same types of problems; indeed, if we understand by
political style the usual way of communicating (verbally and/or non-
verbally)—specific to a politician and/or a socio-political group—oriented
by a set of values and, at the same time, the expression of these values,
defining populism in this way would mean confusing a psychological
predisposition—a mentality11 —with the different ways—the styles—of
formalizing this mentality to express it in public. In the Italian context,
can we for instance say that Umberto Bossi’s anti-meridionalism, Silvio
Berlusconi’s jokes, Beppe Grillo’s theatricality, Matteo Renzi’s white shirt
with rolled up sleeves or Matteo Salvini’s victimization strategy all tend
to define the concept of populism? Here again, the answer is nega-
tive since these are simply elements that contribute in building up the
political style—characterized by a discourse and by all the bodily atti-
tudes that constitute non-verbal language (gestures, faces, posture, and
clothing practices)—of these different politicians. This political style is
10 Cf. L. Pellicani, Ideologia, Treccani, 2014.

11 Understood in the sense of the Italian political scientist Marco Tarchi who, by devel-
oping the work of the Spanish political scientist Juan José Linz, defines the mentality as
“a way of thinking more emotional than rational”, Cf. M. Tarchi, Italia populista. Dal
qualunquismo a Beppe Grillo, il Mulino: Bologna, 2015, pp. 50–52. Cf. J. J. Linz, Total-
itarian and Authoritarian Regimes, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000, p. 162,
for the distinction between mentality and ideology “ […] we use the term ‘mentality’
rather than ‘ideology’, from the distinction of the German sociologist Theodor Geiger
[1932, pp. 77-79]. For him, ideologies are systems of thought more or less intellectually
elaborated and organized, often in written form, by intellectuals, pseudointellectuals, or
with their assistance. Mentalities are ways of thinking and feeling, more emotional than
rational, that provide noncodified ways of reacting to different situations […]. Mentality
is intellectual attitude; ideology is intellectual content. Mentality is psychic predisposition,
ideology is reflection, self-interpretation; mentality is previous, ideology later; mentality is
formless, fluctuating – ideology, however, is firmly formed. Ideology is a concept of the
sociology of culture, mentality is a concept of the study of social character. Ideologies
have a strong utopian element, mentalities are closer to the present or the past”.
152 L. RUCCELLA
not populism as such but reflects the self-image that every politician
constructs to differentiate oneself from others, to “market oneself” in the
“political arena”; it encapsulates, so to speak, the individual and specific
declination that allows him to express a populist mentality (and/or
perceived as such) more or less deeply rooted in him.
The questionable equivalence between populism and political style
encourages—given the aesthetic nature and ancillary character that the
syntagma political style embodies—the establishment of another analog-
ical link: the link between populism and demagogy. On this particular
question, for example, Taguieff writes:
Let us begin by saying that, by the word “populism”, I mean the form
taken by demagogy in contemporary societies whose political culture is
based on democratic values and norms treated as absolutes. This is a
specific form of demagogy, presupposing the principle of the sovereignty of
the people and the norm of their gathering in the united nation.[…] By the
ambiguous word “populism”, I therefore refer broadly to the demagogies
of the democratic age.12
It is clear that populism is demagogic but assigning the signifier

populism to the signified demagogy would imply the recognition of a
semantic equivalence between the two lexical units. However, even if the
sign populism has the seme “demagogy,” this seme is just one of many
different distinctive features that make up its sememe and consequently
it seems that considering a relationship of equivalence between the two
lexemes is questionable. Indeed, if the only presence of the seme “dem-
agogy” was sufficient to designate populism as synonymous—or even
as a simple hyponym—of demagogy, it would mean that any political
force having the same seme should also be so designated. However, since
the birth of modern political communication—whose model has been
built around the persuasive power of the media, the use of communica-
tion experts, and the application of marketing strategies—demagogy has
become a major political tool that no party, movement, or leader can
really give up. It is increasingly present at all levels of communication,
especially since marketing strategies have begun to be applied to poli-
tics to assess the voters’ needs in order to propose them an appropriate
12 P.-A. Taguieff, Le nouveau national-populisme, La Plaine Saint Denis: CNRS éditions,

2016, p. 24.
“offer.” In Italy, Berlusconi was one of the pioneers of this entrepreneurial

vision of politics based on marketing strategies. Henceforth, today, in the
era of “soundocracy” (neologism created from sounding and -cracy),13
demagogy is not a specificity of populism, but a common feature of any
political force. So‚ for me, to designate like Taguieff populism as the set
of “demagogies of the democratic age,” it means to bring into the cate-
gory of populism all the political parties and movements of Republican
Italy.
These same considerations apply to the analogy between populism and
anti-politics because anti-politics—if one means by that the opposition to
traditional parties and professional politicians—is a distinctive feature of
populism, but again, it is not by a single seme that one can define the
sememe of populism.
The sign populism cannot therefore be considered as a synonym for
political style, demagogy or anti-politics, even if it is undoubtedly true
that its sememe has all these distinctive features. Instead, populism is,
I think, a mentality that is expressed through different political styles—
characterized by a more or less clear break with the “conventional” verbal
and non-verbal codes of expression and by a distance from the profile
of the professional politician and the traditional forms of political party
(in this sense populism has an anti-political nature)—in order to get the
support of the people to gain power (populism is then demagogical).
Rhetorical Modality of the Populist Mentality

in the Context of Post-Second World War Italy
In the context of post-Second World War Italy, the populist mentality is
declined differently according to the time and socio-cultural background
of each of the political profiles which, by sharing the fundamental features
of this mentality, express it in a way that is specific to them. Studying
Italian populism therefore means, on the one hand, highlighting the
common features that make it possible to identify a certain mentality as a
populist one and, on the other hand, distinguishing the different styles of
communication—verbal and non-verbal—through which this mentality is
expressed by the different political leaders.
13 It is a neologism created by the Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori, in G.

Sartori, Homo videns, Bari: Laterza, 2000, p. 127.
154 L. RUCCELLA
Despite the interest that the analysis of non-verbal expression codes

could have in understanding the persuasion processes put in place by so-
called Italian populist leaders in order to guide the formation of electoral
preferences, I wish to focus here on verbal expression codes. From this
point of view, the populist mentality is expressed through a common
rhetorical modality built around the fracture between the people and
the elite. The notion of people that emerges from the speeches of the
populist leaders of Republican Italy is clearly summed up in the speeches
of Guglielmo Giannini, satirical journalist and playwright, founder and
leader of the Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque (the Front of Any Man) or
FUQ. Giannini, in post-Second World War Italy, during the dramatic
transition from fascism to the Republic, was the voice of all ordinary
men who considered themselves victims of those whom the leader of the
FUQ calls the “Upp” (politicians by profession, both those on the right
and those on the left). For Giannini, the people are all ordinary men,
namely, men “of good sense, good heart and good faith,”14 the “honest,
hard-working and peaceful people who make up the vast majority of the
population in all countries of the world,”15 “free citizens, willing to live
freely, determined to defend their own freedom and that of others.”16
These people are, according to Giannini, quite capable of managing them-
selves with the help of a “good accountant”17 (idea, this one, which
becomes more radical in Beppe Grillo’s speech that, if we stick to his
words, would be ready to entrust the Ministry of the Economy to a
mother of a family18 ). Finally, these people are literally all the people who
just want to be left alone19 and who express a feeling of exasperation
14 G. Giannini, La Folla. Seimila annidi lotta controla tirannide, Soveria Mannelli:

Rubbettino Editore, 2002, p. 57.
15 Ivi, p. 58.
16 G. Giannini, Questo nostro grande partito, in UQ, IV, 8, 19th February 1947.
17 G. Giannini, op. cit., 2002, p. 74.
18 “As Minister of Finance, I want a lady who has raised three children. I want a lady
who did not make her family fail: these people know what the economy is, not the
‘Bocconians’”, Grillo’s speech, Tsunami Tour, Pistoia, 15th January 2013.
19 “I want to live freely without being annoyed by anyone and especially without being
involved in your fights”, in G. Giannini, “La grande avventura dell’Uomo Qualunque
raccontata da Guglielmo Giannini”, in G. Scognamiglio (curated by), Enciclopedia del
Centenario: Contributo alla storia politica, economica, letteraria e artistica dell’Italia
meridionale nei primi cento anni di vita nazionale, vol. II, Napoli: D’Agostino, 1960.
toward the entire ruling class; an exasperation that manifests itself as soon
as the first issue of the weekly magazine L’Uomo Qualunque—founded by
Giannini and presented as “The newspaper of the Man Anyone, fed up
with all, whose only burning desire is that no one bothers him anymore”
(December 27, 1944)—is published.20 In addition, below the title of
the newspaper, the FUQ slogan “Down with everyone!” appeared, which
indeed is very close to the “Everyone out!” by Beppe Grillo.
The notion of people that emerges from Giannini’s speeches reflects,
despite some differences, the approach of other populists: the people are,
therefore, a virtuous community (a community of “apoti,”21 for Giannini;
a community of “Padani,”22 for Umberto Bossi, founder of the Lega
Nord (Northern League); a community of citizens-engaged for Grillo;
a community of Italians for Berlusconi and for Salvini today23 ). In all
such cases, we are faced with an anti-classist community,24 composed of
common, good, and simple people, of honest workers, who must fight to
ensure better living conditions25 and take, through the establishment of
20 “Enough of everyone, whose only wish is that no one ever bother him again.”, G.
Giannini, Le Vespe, in UQ , anno I, n. 1, 27th December 1944.
21 The term, from the Greek apotos “he who does not buy it,” has been coined in 1922
by the Italian intellectual Giuseppe Prezzolini and it appeared for the first time in the
magazine “La Rivoluzione liberale” (The liberal Revolution), founded by Piero Gobetti.
The “apoti” are therefore the skeptics who do not naively lend faith.
22 The “Padani” are the inhabitants of “Padania,” a fictitious political-administrative
entity corresponding to the geographical area of the Po Valley. The term has been in use
especially since the second half of the nineties when Umberto Bossi and the Lega Nord
members began to use it frequently in their speeches in an independentist and federalist
key.
23 In this regard, it should be pointed out that during the years of activism in the
Northern League of Umberto Bossi, Matteo Salvini’s discourse was completely in line
with that of his mentor: anti-meridionals, anti-Italian, anti-centralist, and anti-Roman.
24 “From the natural envy that the less fortunate and gifted feel for the more fortunate
and gifted, comes the human resentment on which the Chiefs in search of employment
have rushed inventing the class struggle, whose exasperation even led to class hatred,
more stupid than evil […]. The class struggle, therefore, is just another trick of the
Leaders to speculate on the naivety of instincts, on the pains, on the resentments, on the
confused aspirations of the crowd, which arise from a single general desire: the desire to
feel better”, G. Giannini, op. cit., 2002, pp. 125 et 127; “Instead of social envy and class
hatred, let generosity, dedication, solidarity, love for work, tolerance and respect for life
stand”, Silvio Berlusconi, speech of 26th January 1994.
25 “We are the People of Freedom […]: a people that fights against the economic
and social crisis” (Silvio Berlusconi, speech of 23rd March 2013); “But my thanks, the
156 L. RUCCELLA
forms of direct representation, their rightful place in the decision-making

process.26
This community is defined, on the one hand, by the construction
of a collective identity in opposition to the ruling elite, an opposition
favored by the establishment, by the leader, of a magmatic rhetoric built
around communicative strategies (recourse to the possessive our to the
pronoun we and to the opposition us /them, for example) which mobi-
lize a Manichean view of the world (virtuous people against a corrupt
elite; evil Europe against good Italy…). On the other hand, these populist
people are defined by their identification with a system of values recog-
nized as their own and expressed in discourse through the exploitation of
the lexical field of identity (Italian, Italy, North, South, Padania, tradition,
history, culture…). This identity component present in the speeches of
these leaders must not, in my opinion, encourage overly simplistic assim-
ilations that may lead one into considering the mobilization of identity
arguments as the expression of a nationalism based on the supremacy of
one people over another or as the expression of a racism which would
be more or less rooted in a large part of the Italian society. On the
contrary, this identity component should be read and interpreted in the
light of the context in which it is mobilized: that of political commu-
nication, the aim of which is to establish a consensus around a world
vision potentially shared by voters. However, leaving aside value judg-
ments, we should rather wonder about the reasons that may, at a certain
time and in a specific context, lead the people to let themselves be seduced
by an identity and xenophobic discourse. From this perspective, many
scientific works27 illustrate the role played by globalization processes in
strongest and why not, shouted, so that it really does reach your front door, is for those
who can’t get by anymore, for those who fight every day against an absent state, for
those who have not stopped giving up despite the myriad of economic, bureaucratic,
health problems” (Beppe Grillo, blog, 15th March 2018).
26 “That’s the goal. A State without parties, directly governed by its citizens” (Beppe
Grillo, Facebook, 21st June 2011); “We believe that the state should be the servant of
the citizen and not the citizen the servant of the state. The citizen must be sovereign”
(Silvio Berlusconi, speech of 6th February 1994).
27 Cf. A. Montanari, D. Ungaro (eds.), Globalizzazione, politica e identità, Soveria
Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2004; F. Berti, Per una sociologia della comunità, Milano:
Franco Angeli, 2005; R. De Vita, Convivere nel pluralismo, Siena: Contagalli, 2008; N.
Ammaturo, Identità individuale e processi di globalizzazione, Milano: Vita e Pensiero,
2004, C. Crouch, Identità perdute Globalizzazione e nazionalismo, Bari: Laterza, 2019.
the mechanisms of redefining personal identity within communities that

are increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural, and they point out, in
a rather mixed perspective, that these mechanisms of identity redefini-
tion can generate feelings of mistrust and anxiety. Besides, in a context
of political stability, these feelings are generally reabsorbed but in times
of instability they can strengthen and generate—especially when exac-
erbated by aggressive political and media propaganda (as in the case of
the League)—fears and xenophobic attitudes that go hand in hand with
the affirmation of one’s own cultural and territorial (local or national)
identity. This is particularly true for national realities such as Italy, where
the question of identity is a complex issue because “the acquisition of a
national identity has historically continued to coexist with multiple senses
of belonging, with other non-residual local and regional identities, as well
as with ‘all those forms of loyalty to the family and clan, to pseudo-kinship
groups such as the mafia, to the village and town, to the hamlet and the
clique.’”28
It is in this context that the identity and xenophobic rhetoric, typical
of a large part of populist communication, is inserted; populists, using
different levers (insecurity, poverty, exploitation of workers), rely on the
unleashing of fear29 (one of the “laws” of political communication) and,
28 G. De Luna, Figli di un benessere minore. La Lega 1979–1993, Firenze: La Nuova

Italia Editrice, 1994, p. 5.
29 [1] The illegal immigrants must keep in mind that in Italy for them the party is not
only over, it is SUPER-over! And more: fiscal peace, flat tax, protection of agriculture,
fishing, and tourism in the name of Made in Italy, stop VAT increases, no Ius Soli, defence
of labor and pensions, more security, more respect. A beautiful adventure begins, with
good people, motivated, honest, clean, and concrete. The revolution of common sense
begins! (Salvini, Facebook, 5th June 2017); [2] Today I am back as a minister at the
immigrants’ center in Pozzallo (Ragusa). Here more and more illegal immigrants arriving
from Tunisia, not war refugees but often delinquents and former prisoners. Reduce land-
ings and increase returns with expulsion centers in each region, stronger agreements with
countries of origin and re-contracting Italy’s role. Our government will say NO to the
reform of the Dublin regulation because it condemns the Mediterranean countries to
be alone. It’s time for us to make ourselves heard (Matteo Salvini, Facebook, 3rd June
2018); [3] The word immigration is a taboo. Something we have to talk about in a
politically correct way in order not to pass as racists. The immigrant, by definition, needs
help and seeks survival in Italy. Minister Ferrero stated: “a comprehensive strategy should
be put in place. First of all we must facilitate legal entry into our country” and he added
that “in the African continent there would be thirty million young people, aged between
18 and 25 years, ready to leave home and affection” and he finally said “it’s them who
come to do jobs that Italians often don’t want to do anymore” […]. It is not true that
158 L. RUCCELLA
taking advantage of phases of “deep breaking of the continuity of […]

political system,”30 they increase worries, stigmatize the other, nurture
divisions, and present the defense of national (or local) identity as the
natural and necessary response against threats to the community. In this
sense, “the problem and the demand for identity [appears as] a desperate
question in the crisis of certainties and the bankruptcy of the community,
in the decomposition of social relations, in deterritorialization, in the end
of strong ideologies: it springs from a globalized context that is a source
of uncertainty, of fears of homologation, of visibility of ‘other’ cultures
that lead to questioning subjective specificity and to rethinking, among
other things, tradition and the past.”31
The populist movements and parties, especially the Northern League
if we consider the Italian context, have taken advantage—instrumen-
talizing malaise and discontent born from an increasingly sharp divide
between “a progressively abandoned social […] by a politician, who, by
withdrawing into himself, has left him orphaned of the organizational
mediations indispensable for organizing collective action”32 —to provide
answers that seem to be dictated by common sense, but which in reality
are nothing more than the fruit “of the ability to make one’s purpose
seem to be a reflection of the tensions, interests, feelings that dwell in
society”.33 It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the main Italian
populist leaders convey their messages of social integration with explicitly
xenophobic discourses: the tensions, in fact, do not derive from racial
prejudice but from a sort of feeling of injustice and impunity toward
Italians no longer want to do certain jobs, but what are these jobs? The thousands of
e-mails I received […] testify to the contrary. They describe a generation of Italians paid
a few hundred euros a month or unemployed. Boys and girls who would accept those
jobs in a hurry, but in safe conditions and with a decent salary. But perhaps the jobs
are those of the factories that import underpaid labor and pass on the social costs to the
community. And they benefit the owners, not the Italian economy. Migration flows must
be managed at source. The more developed nations should allocate a part of their GDP,
at least as much as they spend on arms, perhaps instead of arms, to help poor countries.
Distribute wealth throughout the world so as not to import slaves and social instability
(Beppe Grillo, Il Blog di Beppe Grillo, 20th August).
30 G. De Luna, op. cit., p. 5.
31 R. De Vita, Convivere nel pluralismo, Siena: Contagalli, 2008, p. 8.
32 G. De Luna, op. cit., pp. 9–10.
33 C. Donegà, “Strategie del presente. I volti della Lega”, in G. De Luna, op. cit.,
p. 81.
all those immigrants who, for one reason or another, are presented as
“enemies” of a given community.
With Salvini, for example, we find this alternation between a xeno-
phobic rhetoric (“Here in Pozzallo there are always more illegal immi-
grants arriving from Tunisia, they are not war refugees, but often criminals
and former detainees”34 ) and a rhetoric in favor of integration (“I would
also like to thank the many legal and decent immigrants who have been
in this country for years, who respect the history, culture and laws of this
country, who pay taxes, who send their children to school, who do an
honest job and who are as Italian as I am”35 ).
The communicative strategy is rather simple: on the one hand, the
presentation and amplification of the danger (in this case the illegal immi-
grant) and, on the other hand, the proposal of a solution (in this case,
implicitly, Salvini proposes to escape the danger by accepting the “good
ones” and by not welcoming the “bad ones” or sending them back to
their respective countries).
Apart from globalization and illegal immigrants, the enemies of the
populists are, from Giannini to Salvini, always identified with the polit-
ical class and with the national or international institutions (the European
institutions, the troika, NGOs, a disgusting business…). Politics and insti-
tutions are two of the enemies common to all Italian populists, although
it should be pointed out that the protest against politics is more radical
in Grillo, who is unreservedly opposed to the party system (Grillo is the
only one who can be defined as anti-party; which explains, moreover, his
distance from the M5S at the time it became institutionalized). The other
leaders, on the contrary, are against parties led by professional politicians
(Giannini, Berlusconi) or against an old class of politicians now consid-
ered incapable of interpreting contemporary society (Renzi and Salvini).
Despite these differences, the struggle waged by these actors against
certain aspects of politics is based, for all, on a rhetoric of radical and
immediate transformation (Grillo’s “tsunami tour,” Renzi’s “scrapping”
and Salvini’s “bulldozer,” “revolution of common sense,” and “govern-
ment of change”) that finds its raison d’être in a context of political
crisis (crisis of the Republic which was built on the rubble left by fascism
34 Statement of 3rd June 2018 written by Matteo Salvini on his Facebook.

35 Video-message published by Salvini on his Facebook page on 24 January 2019. The
video is also accompanied by the following written statement: “those who accuse the
League of Racism have not understood anything.”
160 L. RUCCELLA
and war for Giannini; crisis of the first Republic for Berlusconi; crisis of
the traditional parties for Salvini and Grillo) favorable to the spread of
populism. The enemies of the populists are, of course, not only those
already mentioned, but also finance, banks, bureaucrats, intellectuals,
newspapers, the euro, the “occult powers” and in particular the Bilder-
berg Club and the Trilateral Commission (there is a conspiracy character
in populism: the 1% against the 99%, for example).
All the enemies of the populists are subject to a process of delegit-
imization based on identical communicative strategies: linguistic rude-
ness expressed through different forms of verbal violence threatening
theface—to be understood in the Goffmanian sense of interactive iden-
tity36 —of the enemy. Among these FTAs (Face Threatening Acts),37
the most recurrent are the insults that are often, especially in Gian-
nini and Grillo, paronomasias (for Giannini, for example, the Comitato
di Liberazione Nazionale [National Liberation Council] is the National
Defamation Council and Ferruccio Parri is “Fessuccio Parri”38 ).
The insult may also appear in the form of analogies established on
the basis of a physical, moral, or intellectual defect (Giannini referring
to the Upp defines them as “parasites” and “vermin”; Grillo calls Silvio
Berlusconi “the Psycho-dwarf” and Matteo Renzi “the Florence idiot”
and, more generally, he refers to all political actors as “living dead” or
“zombies”). The propensity to offend can also be expressed through the
exploitation of medical metaphors (Grillo considers journalists as “cancer
of the system”; Giannini makes an analogy between professional policies
and syphilis39 ).
This tendency to offend is finally observed through the use of stigma-
tizing and anachronistic categories (the statement “communists who eat
36 Erving Goffman defines the term face “as the positive social value a person effectively
claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face
is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes […]”, in E. Goffman,
Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face to Face Behavior. Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior, New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005, p. 5.
37 By adopting Goffman’s notion of face, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson
develop their theory of politeness, which for them is a means of preserving the appro-
priateness of the interpersonal relationship, of not harming others through linguistic acts
that threaten their face. These acts are defined as Face Threatening Acts (FTAs).
38 In Italian, “fesso” means “fool.”
39 G. Giannini, op. cit., 2002, p. 8.
children” often repeated by Berlusconi or the epithet “fascist” addressed

to the Northern League or to the Five Star Movement).
It seems to me useful here to emphasize that the use of insult and
verbal aggression are not, as people tend to think, a prerogative of current
politics,40 but linguistic acts whose use has been consolidated over time
by virtue of the perlocutionary force41 with which they are endowed. It
should be pointed out, however, that in the last twenty years, despite what
has happened in the past, this type of language, by inserting itself in the
period of political-institutional transition resulting from the Tangentopoli
scandal, has become an integral part of a wider and more general process
of change that has profoundly modified the patterns of political commu-
nication. If before, in fact, vulgar talk and verbal aggression were, so to
speak, an end in themselves—insult had the objective of neutralizing the
word of the other and interrupting communication—, after the collapse
of the old political system, another function was added to this one: that
of arousing in the popular classes a strong degree of identification with
the new political leadership. In this sense, therefore, insult and aggressive
tones no longer serve only to neutralize the word of the other, but also
assume a central role within a communicative model that breaks with the
linguistic codes of the previous political class.
Anyway, the implementation of strategies of delegitimization of the
other goes hand in hand with the construction of its own legitimacy,
in the face of peers, but also and above all in the face of citizens-
electors. In other words, it is a question of determining the position of
authority of the speaking subject toward its interlocutor. The populist
leader, presenting himself as a common man and therefore at the same
level of the electorate, immediately loses his knowledge authority (as an
expert, a scientist, a specialist). The whole issue will therefore be for such
leaders to ensure that they are recognized as having a personal authority
based on “a practice of relationships of domination (strength), seduction
40 For more details on this subject, cf. A. Capurso, Storia dell’insolenza. Offese, insulti
e turpiloquio nella politica italiana da Cavour a Grillo, Gorgonzola: Il Settimo Libro,
2014.
41 These linguistic acts make it possible, on the one hand, to exert a perlocutionary
effect on the person who receives them (humiliation, indignation, anger, discourage-
ment) and on third parties who witness the interaction without participating directly in it
(mockery of the victim or esteem toward the aggressor). On the other hand, these acts
allow the person who formulates them to enjoy the return effect produced by the acts
themselves (attitude of superiority, exaltation, sense of security).
162 L. RUCCELLA
(charisma) or representation (delegate)”.42 Through the construction of

the authority of these leaders, one can recognize the “characteristics” of
the leader—especially those related to communication—described soci-
ologically by Gustave Le Bon, in his Psychology of the crowds: the first
one is the affirmation “pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and
all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea penetrate the
mind of crowds. The more concise an affirmation is, destitute of every
appearance of proof and demonstration, the more authoritative it is”.43
Statements about immigration, for example, fall into this category when
the latter is defined, despite statistics, as an “invasion.” The second one
is the repetition without which the affirmation would have no real influ-
ence because it is through repetition that “the thing affirmed comes, by
repetition, to fix itself in the minds in such a way that it is accepted
in the end as a demonstrated truth.”44 The repetition is mainly done
by using the slogan (“Thieving Rome the League does not forgive” or
“Lombard mule pays taxes and keep quiet” used by the Bossi’s League;
“Italians first” or “Slaves of Europe? No, thank you!”, repeated by Salvini;
“Down with everyone” or “Everybody out” shouted by Grillo). The last
one is contagion that is “powerful enough to impose on people not only
certain opinions but also certain ways of feeling.”45 The Internet now
easily facilitates this contagion effect.
This process of legitimizing oneself and one’s own personal authority
set up by the populist leader, by this “ventriloquist”46 of the people, is
also expressed by the desire to erase the distance that separates him from
the citizen-elector, at least in terms of language and ethos. To this end,
he uses, as we know, a language that tends to over-simplify, that can
present popular features, including the use of dialectal expressions, that
insists on the contraposition between us and them, a young, informal,
direct language—in short, a language that is opposed, in every respect, to
political correctness.
42 P. Charaudeau, “De l’argumentation entre les visées d’influence de la situation de

communication”, in Argumentation, Manipulation, Persuasion, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007.
43 G. Le Bon, Psychologie des foules, Paris: BoD, 2018, p. 70.
44 Ibidem.
45 Ivi., p. 72.
46 M. Tarchi, “L’Italia populista e il caso Beppe Grillo”, in Quaderni di sociologia.
Populismo, antipolitica e sfide alla democrazia, Rosenberg & Sellier, 2014, p. 37.
Conclusion
Through this analysis, I wished to examine populism from a linguistic
perspective in order to present some major aspects of populist rhetoric in
the context of Republican Italy, but the success of populism cannot, of
course, be attributed solely to the leader’s ability to seduce the audience
with his captivating narrative or the axiological force of the message he
conveys. The language and the undeniable power of persuasion of some
populist leaders are not enough to explain the results of the 2018 elec-
tions in Italy, in particular the constant growth of the Lega (from 4.08%
in 2013 to 17.37% in 2018 and now47 to 33.6%) and M5S (from 25.55%
in 2013 to 32.5% in 2018). When tempted by these simplistic types of
explanations, it should be kept in mind “that the power of influence
of words lies not only in the strength of the project they carry, but in
their echoes in the citizens’ expectations systems.”48 Populism is there-
fore not, as most anti-populist rhetoric presents it, a scourge that suddenly
and for unpredictable reasons threatens our democracies only through
language. On the contrary, it reflects the malfunction of the political class.
It seems essential to me to know how to decipher a certain media rhetoric
that provides a warning about the dangers of populism for the demo-
cratic regime and proposes anachronistic and inaccurate analogies such as
populism = totalitarianism/fascism.
Despite the obvious exhaustion of liberal democracy, it seems diffi-
cult to define populism as a simple negation of democracy. Indeed,
populism, not being an ideology, goes hand in hand with democratic
and anti-democratic ideologies. Thus, it expresses the betrayal of the
promises made by democracy, it fills a void, the one created when the gap
between democratic ideals and pragmatic democracy becomes too wide.
Consequently, Margaret Canovan defines populism and democracy as two
“contentious Siamese twins.” Populism is then not exactly a pathology of
democracy but a physiological element of it.
47 Data as of 24 October 2019.

48 P. Charaudeau, “Réflexions pour l’analyse du discours populiste”, Mots. Les langages
du politique, 97 | 2011.
CHAPTER 8
Economic Populist Attitudes in Western

Europe and the United States
Gilles Ivaldi and Oscar Mazzoleni
The rise of populism is one of the most significant phenomena in today’s

political world. In the last decade, parties labeled as “populist” have
gained significance in Europe and North America, populating both the
left and right of the political spectrum and, as Brexit and the 2016
US presidential election illustrated, increasingly penetrating mainstream
politics.
Economic issues and material grievances are increasingly relevant to the
understanding of the populist phenomenon.1 In the context of economic
1 S. Otjes, G. Ivaldi, A. Ravik Jupskås, O. Mazzoleni, “It’s Not Economic Inter-

ventionism, Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right-Wing Populist
Parties”, Swiss Political Science Review, 24:3, 2018, pp. 270–290.
G. Ivaldi (B)
CEVIPOF-Sciences Po, Paris, France
O. Mazzoleni
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_8
166 G. IVALDI AND O. MAZZOLENI
globalization, economic issues such as welfare, redistribution, and inter-

national trade, which are associated with feelings of economic insecurity,
loss of status and rapid technological change in post-industrial soci-
eties, might be seen as relevant drivers of populism.2 However, the link
between populism and economics remains unclear. The interplay between
economic factors and populism should be explored further by scholars,
both theoretically and empirically, particularly in the field of electoral
politics.
With a specific focus on the economic dimension of populism, this
chapter builds on our previous work and argues the importance of
a specific concept of economic populism.3 While our previous work
concerned the party supply of economic populism, here we are inter-
ested in the demand-side and explore citizens’ attitudes. Accordingly, the
chapter is organized as follows: the first section provides a definition of the
concept of economic populism and explains the rationale for our compar-
ative analysis; next, using empirical data from a cross-national survey in
two Western European countries—France and Switzerland—and in the
United States, we show that economic populism forms a consistent atti-
tude that can be measured across different contexts and which operates
alongside other established socio-economic correlates of populism.
Economic Populism
While the rise of populist actors is increasingly associated with economic
issues such as welfare, redistribution, and international trade,4 we
still need a better understanding of the link between populism and
economics.5
2 D. Rodrik, “Populism and the Economics of Globalization”, Journal of Interna-

tional Business Policy, 1:1–2, 2018, pp. 12–33; J. Gest, T. Reny, J. Mayer, “Roots of
the Radical Right: Nostalgic Deprivation in the United Statesand Britain”, Comparative
Political Studies, 51:13, 2018, pp. 1694–1719.
3 G. Ivaldi, O. Mazzoleni, “Economic Populism and Sovereigntism. The Economic
Supply of European Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties”, European Politics and Society,
21:2‚ 2020‚ pp. 202–218.
4 Rodrik 2018.
5 G. Magni, Inequality, Immigrants, and Selective Solidarity: How Economic Disparity
Fuels Cultural Conflict, Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association
Annual Congress, Chicago, 2018; M. Carreras, I. Y. Carreras, S. Bowler, “Long-Term
Economic Distress, Cultural Backlash, and Support for Brexit”, Comparative Political
8 ECONOMIC POPULIST ATTITUDES IN WESTERN EUROPE … 167
Left–Right Economic Orientations and Beyond

The main definitions of populism in political science do not explicitly
include a link to economics. Mudde defines populism as a “thin-centred”
ideology, which “considers society to be ultimately separated into two
homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the
corrupt elite.”6 Populist actors claim to represent the “ordinary people”
and the latter is given a positive moral connotation in opposition to the
elite. According to Mény and Surel and Canovan, populists claim that
the “true people” have been betrayed by elites and that a radical change
is needed in order to restore the people’s rights.7 Laclau argues that
populism is a logic of discursive construction of two blocs, the “peo-
ple” and their “opponents,” which is situated in critical junctures.8 While
not excluding an economic dimension, these definitions imply that the
economy may be considered a separate domain vis-à-vis populism.
Moreover, where the economic dimension is put into the picture, it
is often taken as a proxy for the classic left–right ideological opposition
between state and market, whereby party agendas, platforms, and citizen’s
attitudes are almost exclusively seen through the lenses of the market
liberal versus interventionist-egalitarian cleavage. Following such assump-
tions, economic issues generally tend to be considered more relevant to
populism on the left than on the right of the party spectrum. The main
populist scholarship argues that right-wing populism primarily operates
on the cultural dimension in relation to issues of immigration and multi-
culturalism9 while, on the left, populism is predominantly associated with
Studies, 52:9, 2019, pp. 1396–1424; L. McKay, “Left Behind’ People, or Places? The
Role of Local Economies in Perceived Community Representation”, Electoral Studies, 60,
2019, 102046, pp. 1–11; J. C. Hays, L. Junghyun, J.-J. Spoon, “The Path from Trade
to Right-Wing Populism in Europe”, Electoral Studies, 60, 2019, pp. 1–14.
6 C. Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39, 2004, pp. 542-
563.
7 Y. Mény, Y. Surel, Par le peuple, pour le peuple. Le populisme et la démocratie, Paris:
Fayard, 2000; M. Canovan, The People, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.
8 E. Laclau, On Populist Reason, London and New York: Verso, 2005.
9 C. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2007; H. G. Betz, “Facets of Nativism: A Heuristic Exploration”, Patterns of
Prejudice, 53:2, 2019, pp. 111–135; P. Norris, R. Inglehart, Cultural Backlash. Trump,
Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
socio-economic values and preferences for egalitarian economic policies.10

Such asymmetrical view emphasizes also the vagueness and often contra-
dictory supply of economic policies by right-wing populist parties as they
need to address a heterogeneous set of socio-economic conditions and
preferences among their supporters.11
While such perspectives make a significant contribution to our under-
standing of the variety of the populist phenomenon, they do not entirely
allow to solve the puzzle of the relationship between populism and the
economy. Recent literature suggests that economic grievances are a major
factor of populist success, both left and right.12 Populist actors mobi-
lize on feelings of economic insecurity arising from globalization and
rapid change in post-industrial societies.13 They address a wide range
of socio-economic issues both domestic and foreign, in connection with
global challenges and international economic integration, showing an
inclination toward protectionist policies. Meanwhile, there is substantial
variation in those parties’ socio-economic policies, which suggests that the
political economy of populism may not necessarily align with traditional
economic cleavages. Research suggests that the populist mobilization of
economic and material grievances should simply not be reduced to tradi-
tional left–right or state-market oppositions.14 It is therefore important
that we explore further the relationships between economic grievances
and issues, and provide alternative ways of thinking about the relationship
between populism and the economy, which allow to go beyond traditional
approaches.
10 L. March, “From Vanguard of the Proletariat to Vox Populi: Left-Populism as a

‘Shadow’ of Contemporary Socialism”, SAIS Review, 27:1, 2007, pp. 63–77; P. Segatti,
F. Capuzzi, “Five Star Movement, Syriza and Podemos: A Mediterranean Model? In A.
Martinelli (ed.), Populism on the Rise. Democracies Under Challenge?, Milan: Instituto per
gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 2017, pp. 43–74.
11 J. Rovny, J. Polk, “Still Blurry? Economic Salience, Position and Voting for Radical
Right Parties in Western Europe”, European Journal of Political Research, 59:2‚ 2020‚
pp. 248–268.
12 Rodrik 2018.
13 B. Bonikowski, “Three Lessons of Contemporary Populism in Europe and the United
States”, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 23:1, 2017, pp. 9–24; R. Gidron, P. A. Hall,
“The Politics of Social Status: Economic and Cultural Roots of the Populist Right”, The
British Journal of Sociology, 68:S1, 2017, pp. 57–84.
14 Otjes et al. 2018.
The Economic Populism Framework

We take our inspiration from Mény and Surel15 and argue that current
populist claims, as expressed especially in Western democracies, deploy
an underlying master economic frame which is embedded into populist
politics and which, as we argue below, shows variation in terms of the
socio-economic policies that are associated with it. The general economic
populist frame is based upon the idea that the “true” people embodies an
economic community who shares a common destiny, and whose material
well-being and prosperity are in decline and/or at risk. The well-being of
the “people” is presented as ignored or betrayed by the “elite.” According
to the economic populist frame, the “true” people is defined as a “vir-
tuous” community of hardworking “makers,” which is opposed to a
“corrupt” and essentially nonproductive elite at the top of society. Finally,
economic populism implicitly conveys a message of “nostalgia of the
old good times”16 by referring to an idealized or “gold” period when
economic well-being was predominant among the people, and which
needs to be restored.17
Our main hypothesis is that, while following a similar logic, this
broader master frame might be expressed differently across different
Western contexts, partially cross-cutting traditional left–right economic
cleavages. While previous research has identified economic populism as
a core feature of radical right-wing populist (RRP) politics,18 there is
good reason to believe that economic populism may also find its way
into left-wing politics, thus showing some commonalities across different
manifestations of the populist phenomenon.
Such views do not necessarily imply that the left–right economic
cleavage is obsolete, however. In fact, our second hypothesis is that
economic populism may be expressed differently in relation to other
important economic aspects that are usually linked to populism, such
15 Mény, Surel 2000.

16 H. G. Betz, C. Johnson, “Against the Current—Stemming the Tide: The Nostalgic
Ideology of the Contemporary Radical Populist Right”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 9:3,
2004, p. 324.
17 C. Thorleifsson, “From Coal to Ukip: the Struggle Over Identity in Post-industrial
Doncaster”, History and Anthropology, 27:5, 2016, pp. 555–568; Gest et al. 2018.
18 Ivaldi, Mazzoleni 2019a; G. Ivaldi, O. Mazzoleni, “Economic Populism and Produc-
erism: European Right-Wing Populist Parties in a Transatlantic Perspective”, Populism,
2:1, 2019b, pp. 1–28.
as welfare chauvinism, redistributive policies, and attitudes toward global

trade. Welfare chauvinism tends to be strongly associated with right-wing
authoritarian populism,19 however not necessarily implying an opposition
to globalization.20 Moreover, it has been demonstrated that radical right-
wing populist parties (RRPPs) vary greatly in terms of their supply of
domestic economic policies.21 Egalitarian economic policies and support
for redistribution are, on the other hand, usually considered the most
distinctive features of left-wing populism.22 Left-wing actors have also
become more prone to opposing economic globalization which they see
as operating against the interests of the “people,” thus showing some
convergence with the anti-globalization agenda of the populist right.23
Economic Populist Attitudes in a Comparative Perspective

To grasp economic populism and its related economic aspects, it is crucial
to study resemblances and dissimilarities in a comparative perspective.24
Our analysis focuses on two countries in Western Europe, namely France
and Switzerland, which we contrast with the United States. These three
countries show different party systems and political economies, as well
as different levels of supranational integration and exposure to glob-
alization, thus providing enough variance to test our proposition that
19 Norris, Inglehart 2019.

20 E. Helleiner, A. Pickel, Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World, Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2005.
21 Otjes et al. 2018, p. 285.
22 S. M. Van Hauwaert, C. H. Schimpf, F. Azevedo, “The Measurement of Populist
Attitudes: Testing Cross-National Scales Using Item Response Theory”, Politics, 40(1)‚
2020‚ pp. 3–21.
23 G. Ivaldi, M. E. Lanzone, D. Woods, “Varieties of Populism Across a Left-Right
Spectrum: The Case of the Front National, the Northern League, Podemos and Five Star
Movement”, Swiss Political Science Review, 23:4, 2017, pp. 354–376.
24 Ivaldi et al. 2017; A. Santana, J. Rama, “Electoral Support for Left Wing Populist
Parties in Europe: Addressing the Globalization Cleavage”, European Politics and Society,
19:5, 2018, pp. 558–576; L. Bernhard, H. Kriesi, “Populism in Election Times: A
Comparative Analysis of 11 Countries in Western Europe”, West European Politics, First
online, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2019.1596694; J. Rama, A. Santana,
“In the Name of the People: Left Populists Versus Right Populists”, European Politics
and Society, 21(1)‚ 2020‚ pp. 17–35.
economic populism may be a common feature in Western countries,

however manifesting differently according to context.
In France, populism is found both left and right of the political
spectrum. Left-wing populism is embodied by Jean-LucMélenchon’s La
France Insoumise (Rebellious France, LFI) while right-wing populism
manifests itself predominantly in Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national
(RN, formerly Front National ).25 In Switzerland, populism is mainly
found to the right of the party system, in the Swiss People’s Party
(Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP), which has been the dominant party in
the Lower Chamber since the beginning of the 2000s.26 Finally, populism
is a(n) historical feature of American politics and it has recently found its
way in the 2016 presidential campaign, both to the left (Bernie Sanders)
and right (Donald Trump) of the partisan spectrum, which makes the US
a relevant case for our cross-continental analysis of economic populism.27
By selecting relatively different cases, at least among Western tradi-
tions, we try and explore similarities in the manifestations of economic
populism. Economic populism may be analyzed both in terms of party
supply—i.e., messages spread by political actors—and voter demand—i.e.,
political attitudes of their supporters. This chapter looks more specifically
at the demand-side of economic populism. Populist ideas resonate with
large swathes of voters in Western societies where relevant populist parties
and leaders have been able to shape public opinion beyond the elec-
toral arena. It is therefore crucial that we investigate whether economic
populist attitudes exist among citizens. We may expect some citizens to
hold economic populist attitudes that would make them more suscep-
tible to a populist appeal. We ask in particular to which extent economic
populism may be considered a specific set of attitudes among Western
25 G. Ivaldi, “Populism in France”, in D. Stockemer (ed.), Populism Around the World:

A Comparative Perspective, Cham: Springer, 2018, pp. 27–48.
26 O. Mazzoleni, “Political Achievements, Party System Changes and Government
Participation: The Case of the ‘New’ Swiss People’s Party”, in A. Zaslove, S. Wolinetz
(eds.), Absorbing the Blow: Populist Parties and Their Impact on Parties and Party Systems,
London: Rowman & Littlefield International/ECPR Press, 2018, pp. 83–102.
27 K. R. Hawkins, R. Dudley, J. W. Tan, “Made in USA: Populism Beyond Europe”, in
A. Martinelli (ed.), Beyond Trump. Populism on the Rise, Novi Ligure: Edizioni Epoké—
ISPI, 2016, pp. 93–110; Bonikowski 2017; J. E. Oliver, W. M. Rahn, “Rise of the
Trumpenvolk: Populism in the 2016 Election”, ANNALS, AAPSS, 667, 2016, pp. 189–
206; Ivaldi, Mazzoleni 2019b.
voters and to which extent such attitudes interact with other established
socio-economic correlates of populism.
Data and Methods

Our analysis is based upon a cross-national survey conducted in France,
Switzerland, and the US among representative national samples of the
voting-age population. The survey was conducted online by YouGov
in April 2019. Participants were selected by the polling company from
their national panels recruited via the internet. The survey used quota-
sampling based on gender, age, occupation, and type of municipality with
regional/state stratification. Potential “speeders” who had completed the
questionnaire in less than half the median time were excluded, resulting in
final analytical samples of 1932, 2062, and 2093 respondents in France,
Switzerland, and the US, respectively.
To measure economic populism, we use five items. The first three
items reflect the idea of the “people” as an economic community of
hardworking “makers,” and risk for their well-being. The last two items
concern the attribution of responsibility to the elite for the decline of
the well-being of the people and claim to recover popular sovereignty to
protect its interests.
– “In this country, one does not really care about people who work
hard”
– “The overall economic well-being of this country has declined”
– “Today in [COUNTRY], many economic decisions are made
without considering the interests of the people”
– “The government in this country does not really care about the
people’s living standards”
– “Citizens should have more say in the important decisions for our
country”
In line with recent studies of populist attitudes,28 we use Item Response

Theory (IRT) analysis to assess the measurement validity of our scale of
Economic Populism and examine IRT properties of unidimensionality,
28 Van Hauwaert et al. 2019.

local independence, and monotonicity.29 The five economic populism

items are combined in a single attitudinal dimension using an IRT score
from a Graded Response Model (GRM) which we take as our dependent
variable.
The analysis is performed by means of a series of linear regression
models which include standard socio-demographics, i.e., gender, age,
education, and occupation. Age is used as a continuous variable. Since
we suspect that its effect may be curvilinear, we include a squared term
in the models. For education, we use a three-group variable, with low,
middle, and high education. Occupation is based on the five-class version
of the European Socio-economic Classification (ESeC), which is a well-
documented standard30 and which has the following classes: managerial,
administrative and professional occupations; intermediate occupations;
small employers and own account workers; lower supervisory and tech-
nical occupations and semi-routine and routine occupations.
We then add attitudinal and political controls, namely political affilia-
tion (left–right ideology) and a set of economic and cultural correlates of
populism, i.e., economic redistribution, welfare chauvinism—that is the
belief that access to the welfare state should be restricted to natives—
, which is a crucial component of radical right-wing populist ideology,
and attitudes toward globalization which are commonly seen as drivers of
populist support both left and right.31
29 Unidimensionality means that only one latent variable is required to explain the
association between item scores. Local independence (conditional association) implies that
items are associated only via the latent dimension. Monotonicity means that the probability
of endorsing a “correct” response option increases with increasing levels of the latent
construct.
30 D. Rose, E. Harrison (eds.), Social Class in Europe: An Introduction to the European
Socio-economic Classification, London: Routledge, 2010.
31 We use two different items to measure pro-redistribution attitudes among citizens:
“To reduce inequality, one should take from the rich to give to the poor”; “It is the
government’s responsibility to ensure a decent standard of living for all.” Attitudes toward
economic globalization are measured from the items: “Globalization is an opportunity for
economic growth in [COUNTRY]”; “Trade with other countries leads to jobs creation.”
We use the following items for welfare chauvinism: “Immigration is good for the econ-
omy”; “Immigrants bring in more than they take out”; “Immigrants who work hard
should be allowed to stay”; “Priority should be given to nationals over foreigners in
jobs.”
Results
The analysis confirms our first hypothesis that economic populism can be
constructed as a single latent attitudinal dimension across our three coun-
tries and that economic populist attitudes are shared by ordinary citizens
across different contexts. The scale has high internal coherence, and it
meets fundamental IRT assumptions of unidimensionality, local indepen-
dence of items, and monotonicity in each of our cases. Coefficients of
homogeneity in France and Switzerland suggest a strong scale (H > 0.5).
In the US, the coefficient for the scale is 0.41 (s.e. = 0.012) which indi-
cates a moderate scale (0.4 < H < 0.5).32 Our scale shows good reliability
across all three samples with Cronbach Alphas all above the 0.7 cut-off. In
each country, we compute an IRT score of Economic Populism, which we
estimate from a Graded Response Model (GRM) for polytomous items.33
The IRT score provides a standardized measure of Economic Populism
(mean = 0 and sd = 1), which we take as our DV in the following
analyses.
This first raises the question of which social groups and categories
may be most prone to economic populist attitudes. To answer this ques-
tion, we run three linear regression models—one for each country—and
test the significance of standard socio-demographic variables, namely
gender, age, education, and occupation (see Table 8.1). As can be seen,
while we find significant differences of economic populism across social
groups, a strict socio-demographic model has little explanatory power,
with adjusted R 2 of 0.05, 0.10, and 0.03 in France, Switzerland, and the
US, respectively.
The analysis shows commonalities across our three countries. First,
women seem to be more prone to economic populism than men, which
is surprising as populism is generally regarded as a predominantly male
phenomenon, particularly in its radical right-wing variant. Age is a signif-
icant factor across all three countries: as anticipated, in Switzerland and
the US, the effect of age is curvilinear with support for populism being
lower among both the younger and older citizens. In France, the effect
32 Bootstrapped polychoric inter-item correlations are significant and positive for pairs
of items across each country, and—with the exception of one pair in the French data—
they are all below 0.8, which suggests local independence. Moreover, we do not find any
serious violation of monotonicity.
33 Van Hauwaert et al. 2019.
Table 8.1 Base model of economic populism in France, Switzerland, and the
US
IRT Score of Economic Populism

France Switzerland USA
Female (ref = 0.25 (0.04)*** 0.11 (0.04)** 0.16 (0.04)***

male)
Age 1.41 (0.96) 4.71 (0.91)*** 2.41 (0.94)*
Age squared −4.24 (0.91)*** −6.47 (0.89)*** −2.97 (0.94)**
Education + (ref −0.11 (0.05)* −0.29 (0.06)*** −0.05 (0.05)
= Educ−)
Education ++ (ref −0.27 (0.06)*** −0.33 (0.05)*** −0.01 (0.05)
= Educ−)
Intermediate 0.09 (0.06) 0.12 (0.06)* 0.17 (0.07)*
occupations (Ref
= Professionals)
Small employers 0.02 (0.07) 0.06 (0.06) −0.08 (0.06)
and own account
workers
Lower supervisory 0.20 (0.06)** 0.26 (0.06)*** 0.13 (0.07)
and technical
occupations
Semi-routine and 0.17 (0.07)** 0.29 (0.07)*** 0.23 (0.07)***
routine
occupations
Intercept −0.09 (0.06) 0.003 (0.05) −0.13 (0.05)*
Observations 1905 2037 1890

R2 0.06 0.10 0.03
Adjusted R 2 0.05 0.10 0.03
Residual std. error 0.90 (df = 1895) 0.88 (df = 2027) 0.89 (df = 1880)
F statistic 13.30*** (df = 9; 25.10*** (df = 9; 6.78*** (df = 9;
1895) 2027) 1880)
Notes * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; Linear regressions; Std errors between brackets; YouGov
survey, April 2019
Source The authors
of age is primarily found among older citizens who are significantly less
prone to economic populism.
In our two European countries, economic populism is significantly
associated with education, and is predominantly found among the less
educated, i.e., those without a Baccalauréat (France) or matura (Switzer-

land). Citizens with secondary and tertiary education are on the other
hand less likely to show economic populist attitudes. In contrast, in the
US, we find no such evidence of an educational cleavage underlying
economic populism.
Finally, economic populism is distributed across different occupational
groups in our three countries. In France, economic populism is primarily
found in the lower social strata, among lower supervisory and technical,
semi-routine and routine occupations, while it has a more “middle class”
basis in the US and in Switzerland where economic populist attitudes are
also more pronounced among respondents in clerical and intermediate
occupations.
We then turn to full models that include left–right self-placement
and other attitudinal correlates of populism. This second set of linear
regressions allows to test the relationship between economic populist atti-
tudes—as our DV—and other important political and economic aspects
which may be related to populist claims (Table 8.2). The models find
significant effects of sociopolitical and economic attitudes on levels of
economic populism, with higher R 2 of 0.31 (France), 0.26 (Switzerland),
and 0.17 (USA), respectively.
We see important commonalities between our two European cases.
In both France and Switzerland, economic populism is strongly and
positively associated with welfare chauvinism, negative attitudes toward
economic globalization and, most evidently, preferences for economic
redistribution. While redistribution has also a strong effect in the US, we
find no relationship between economic populism and welfare chauvinism
nor views of economic globalization in the American context.
The effect of left–right self-placement also seems to be dependent
upon national context. While in Switzerland economic populism seems
to be mostly a right-wing phenomenon—as indicated by the positive
correlation with the left/right self-placement variable in the model—, we
find no significant effect in the other two countries, which suggests that
economic populism may spread across the entire political spectrum. Since
we suspect a possible curvilinear relationship in the French and American
Table 8.2 Full model of economic populism in France, Switzerland, and the
US
IRT Score of Economic Populism

France Switzerland USA
Female (ref = 0.20 (0.05)*** 0.07 (0.04) 0.08 (0.05)

male)
Age 1.53 (1.04) 2.92 (0.96)** 6.74 (1.09)***
Age squared −2.93 (0.98)** −3.89 (0.96)*** −2.60 (1.05)*
Education + (ref 0.02 (0.06) −0.13 (0.06)* 0.07 (0.06)
= Educ−)
Education ++ 0.01 (0.06) −0.12 (0.05)* 0.05 (0.06)
(ref = Educ−)
Intermediate 0.02 (0.07) 0.12 (0.06) 0.13 (0.08)
occupations (Ref
= Professionals)
Small employers 0.13 (0.07) 0.03 (0.06) −0.08 (0.06)
and own account
workers
Lower supervisory 0.06 (0.07) 0.13 (0.07) 0.17 (0.07)*
and technical
occupations
Semi-routine and 0.08 (0.07) 0.13 (0.07) 0.25 (0.07)***
routine
occupations
Left–Right 0.01 (0.01) 0.04 (0.01)*** −0.02 (0.01)
Welfare 0.11 (0.02)*** 0.13 (0.02)*** 0.04 (0.02)
Chauvinism
Redistribution 0.26 (0.02)*** 0.23 (0.01)*** 0.18 (0.02)***
Globalization −0.09 (0.02)*** −0.05 (0.02)** 0.02 (0.02)
positive
Intercept −1.71 (0.15)*** −1.65 (0.15)*** −1.00 (0.17)***
Observations 1243 1498 1347

R2 0.32 0.26 0.18
Adjusted R 2 0.31 0.26 0.17
Residual std. error 0.77 (df = 1229) 0.79 (df = 1484) 0.81 (df = 1333)
F statistic 44.20*** (df = 13; 41.00*** (df = 13; 22.70*** (df = 13;
1229) 1484) 1333)
Notes * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; Linear regressions; Std errors between brackets; YouGov
survey, April 2019
Source The authors
France United States
Fig. 8.1 Economic Populism and left/right placement in France and the US*
(Source The authors; *Based on full models in Table 8.2, including a squared
term for left–right self-placement)
cases, we run our full model again including a squared term for left/right
placement and find significant effects.34
The effects for France and the US are shown in Fig. 8.1. In France, the
quadratic term is strongly positive, which corroborates that the effect of
left–right ideologies is clearly more pronounced at both extremes of the
political scale; in the US, we find that both parameters are significant, with
a negative sign for left–right self-placement, which suggests that economic
populism is found at both ends of the spectrum, yet at a relatively higher
level to the left of the ideological axis. As Fig. 8.1 illustrates, the U-shaped
relationship in the American case is however much less pronounced than
in France.
Conclusion
This chapter has highlighted the economic dimension of populism,
showing the importance of a more systematic analysis of the interplay
between economic issues and grievances, on the one hand, and populism,
on the other hand. While populism is usually presented as a phenomenon
34 In France, the coefficients and standard errors for left/right placement are as follows:
1.14 (1.0) n.s., 6.8 (0.84)***; in the US, the coefficients are: −2.3 (1.2) significant at
the 0.1 level; 2.3 (0.9)*.
or concept distinct from the economic dimension, we have argued in

this chapter that some economic aspects should be considered inherent
in current populist frames, as they manifest in particular across Western
countries. Material grievances, feelings of economic anxiety, and social
inequalities form part of a consistent economic populist frame which
constructs its people as a community of producers who share a common
destiny and whose well-being is in decline and/or at risk, and needs to
be restored.
Economic populist frames are key to the mobilization of voters by
populist parties, but, as this chapter has demonstrated, such frames
may also lay the basis for a common attitudinal feature among ordi-
nary citizens. Economic populist attitudes can be found among large
swathes of citizens in Western societies, making those citizens poten-
tially more susceptible to a populist appeal. By looking more specifically
at the demand-side of economic populism, this chapter has first illustrated
some commonalities in the socio-demographic and educational drivers
of economic populism. Young people, women, and, most evidently in
Europe, less so in US, low-educated citizens are more likely to exhibit
economic populist attitudes. This is consistent with previous research on
voting behavior, which provides evidence that less-educated people are
generally more attracted to populism.35
Turning to attitudinal drivers, this chapter has examined attitudes
toward welfare chauvinism, redistributive policies, and international trade,
and found significant differences in the manner in which each of those
may relate to economic populism. As our findings indicate, economic
populism should not be confused with other economic issues such as the
state-market opposition, which are traditionally associated with populism.
The intersection between economic populism and attitudes such as
welfare chauvinism and opposition to globalization should be regarded
as context dependent. Let us note also that the different economic
aspects that we have considered in this chapter do not represent a single
phenomenon, for instance under the generic opposition between state
and market, and they may not all have the same relevance to our under-
standing of economic populism across different contexts. As illustrated by
our findings, economic redistribution may be seen as a strong correlate of
economic populism across our three countries, while we see differences
35 Norris and Inglehart 2019, p. 135.

in the relationships between economic populism, welfare chauvinism, and

attitudes toward globalization in the US when contrasted with our two
European cases, again pointing to the importance of national contexts and
economic traditions. Such importance is revealed further in the analysis of
the distribution of economic populist attitudes across the left–right axis.
Our findings provide empirical evidence that economic populism may find
its way into both left and right-wing politics, again according to context,
political supply by actors, and economic traditions and legacies.
While this contribution has shed some light on how economic issues
may be imbricated into populism, we have so far limited ourselves to
exploring the socio-demographic drivers of economic populist attitudes
and how such attitudes may relate to other important attitudinal features.
A crucial future research agenda should concern the effect of economic
populist attitudes on voting preferences, and their relevance to populist
electoral support across both the left and right of the political spectrum.
Moreover, this contribution has essentially built and expanded on our
previous work regarding the supply of economic populism by RRPPs in
Western Europe and the US.36 As our findings here suggest, we should
turn our attention to how economic populist attitudes may contribute to
explain voter preferences in contexts where populism manifests itself also
to the left of the party system.
36 Ivaldi, Mazzoleni 2019a, 2019b.

CHAPTER 9
Conservative Populism and the American

Welfare State Since the 1960s
Tamara Boussac
In July 1961, a resident of Freeport, NY wrote a furious letter to New

York Senator Kenneth Keating. “I protest on supporting lazy men and
women with numerous illegitimate children with the taxes of the people,”
he ranted.1 “As a citizen of New York State and a taxpayer county, state,
federal, I protest vigorously against the pernicious waste of our tax money
on chiselers, immoral women and parasites,” a dangerous trend “encour-
aged by the misguided philosophy of our so-called liberals.” In a typically
populist rhetoric, this New Yorker saw American society as essentially split
between two antagonistic groups: virtuous taxpayers on the one hand, and
undeserving welfare recipients aided by complicit “liberal” politicians on
the other.
1 Anonymous, letter to Kenneth Keating, July 1961. Series 2, box 860, folder 12
“Social Security: Welfare-Newburgh NY. 1961–1962”, Kenneth Keating Papers, Rush
Rhees Library, Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, University of Rochester
(hereafter Keating papers).
T. Boussac (B)
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_9
182 T. BOUSSAC
Political scientist Cas Mudde has defined populism as an “ideology

that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous
and antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’.”2 In
the US, however, the definition of “populism” is a complex one since
the notion was first associated with the anti-monopoly protest move-
ment of the late nineteenth century, which demanded social rights and
protection for workers.3 Led by agricultural and industrial workers in
the South and the Midwest, the movement brought about the rise of
the People’s Party in the 1890s. According to historians Michael Kazin
and Jonathan Rieder, the notion was reformulated in the mid-twentieth
century as it more evidently became a language of the American right.
“Conservative populism,” as Kazin and Rieder have defined it, was a
language used by politicians who sought to appeal to white, working-
and middle-class voters as taxpayers overwhelmed by the cost of liberal
largesse toward racial minorities.4 Race, these historians have shown, was
central to conservative populism in the postwar era in a context of court-
mandated desegregation efforts in the South and rising racial tensions
and deindustrialization in the urban North. In a recent preface to his
influential book The Populist Persuasion, Michael Kazin has talked of
a “racialist-nationalist” tradition in American populism extending from
George Wallace, the staunchly segregationist Governor of Alabama who
sought the US presidency in 1964 and 1968, and Barry Goldwater,
the conservative, anti-labor, anti-desegregation Senator of Arizona, and
Republican candidate in 1964, to Ronald Reagan, the former Governor
of California and conservative President in the 1980s, and Donald
Trump.5 The definition of “the people” appealed to by these politi-
cians was, according to Kazin, “narrow and ethnically exclusive” and was
understood to encompass citizens of European heritage whose rights as
taxpayers clashed with African Americans’ claims to greater economic,
2 Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39:4, Autumn
2004, pp. 541–563.
3 Robert C. McMath Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877–1898, New York:
Hill and Wang, 1993, p. 122.
4 Jonathan Rieder, “The Rise of the Silent Majority”, in Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle
(eds.),The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1989, pp. 243–268 (p. 243); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An
American History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017 [1995], p. 4.
5 Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, preface to the 2017 edition, p. xv.
9 CONSERVATIVE POPULISM AND THE AMERICAN WELFARE … 183
political, and social rights.6 The notion of “conservative populism,”

however, does not conflate populism with modern conservatism—a broad
intellectual, social, and political movement that rejected the principles of
the New Deal, resented racial integration, and fretted over the spread
of communism.7 Conservative populism specifically refers to a recurring
rhetoric that vowed to protect white, middle-class taxpayers from the
governing elite who allegedly wasted the people’s money on undeserving
minorities as a political strategy.8
This contribution demonstrates that social policy has been a struc-
tural yet paradoxical component of conservative populism. Conservative
populism saw American society as fundamentally divided between the
deserving people on the one hand—understood as white, middle-class
taxpayers—and those perceived as the tax-eating, parasitic, mostly African
American poor on the other hand, whom liberal “do-gooders” had
allegedly made the primary beneficiaries of social benefits. The two-track
nature of the American welfare state, split between a series of insurance
and assistance programs that ran along gender and racial lines, allowed for
a paradoxical populist discourse: while national and local elected officials
appealed to white voters with promises to scale down public assistance
to the poor, these promises were often coupled with pledges to main-
tain and even expand social insurance benefits for those perceived as
6 Ibid., p. xiii.
7 For an overview of the historiography of American conservatism, see Kim Phillips-Fein,
“Conservatism: A State of the Field”, The Journal of American History, 98:3, December
2011, pp. 723–743.
8 Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, p. 4.
184 T. BOUSSAC
deserving, working people.9 This contribution seeks to retrace conser-

vative populists’ dual discourse on the welfare state as well as investigate
its historical origins and development from marginal to prominent theme
in American politics.
In the postwar years, the stingy, means-tested assistance programs that
had been created during the New Deal were increasingly perceived as
primarily serving women of color and were financed through federal
and state general revenues.10 As such, they were particularly exposed to
taxpayers’ resentment and populist attacks, which were particularly salient
against Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), a program created by the
Social Security Act of 1935 to serve needy mothers who had to care
for their children. Starting in the 1960s, “welfare”—soon a synonym
for ADC—provided conservative leaders with a powerful rhetoric that
pledged to defend taxpayers’ money from freeloaders—“welfare queens,”
juvenile delinquents or illegal immigrants who allegedly chose to live
off government largesse—and vote-hungry politicians, who were deemed
equally responsible for growing welfare rolls. In doing so, they often
denounced the existence of a welfare elite assumed to have a vested
interest in seeing social spending soar.
Attacks on welfare were characterized by distrust of social experts, a
typical populist theme. Unlike experts and bureaucrats, who were thought
to be led astray by their complicated language and biased analyses, ordi-
nary people were believed to be endowed with a common sense that made
9 A number of historians have shown how gender and race have shaped the Amer-
ican welfare state. On gender, see notably Linda Gordon, Pitied Not Entitled: Single
Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1994; Gwendolyn Mink, Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–
1942, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995; Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of
Women: Social Policy from Colonial Times to Present, Boston: South End Press, 1998; Alice
Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship
in 20th-Century America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. On race and welfare,
see Ellen Reese, Backlash Against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present, Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2005; Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare:
Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999; Kenneth J. Neubeck, and Noel A. Cazenave. Welfare Racism: Playing the Race
card against America’s Poor, Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2001; Jill Quadagno, The
Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996; Robert Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare
State, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
10 The program was named Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) until 1962, when it
was renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
them envision simple, efficient solutions to fix the “welfare mess” created
by the liberal establishment. According to historian Sophia Rosenfeld,
the conservative strain of American populism rested on the concept of
a collective common sense positing that ordinary citizens had a better
understanding of social organization than university-educated experts.11
In the populist worldview, government and social policy should thus
simply be based on the people’s common sense rather than on the
bureaucrats’ automated thinking.
Yet, one overlooked aspect of conservative populism in the US has
been the promise to provide broader social benefits to the deserving white
working- and middle-classes so as to expand, rather than roll back, the
welfare state. Social insurance programs for workers such as the federal
pension system Social Security served mostly white men and their fami-
lies. Because they were financed through hidden payroll taxes, they were
perceived as annuities workers received as matter of right. Unlike “wel-
fare,” social insurance programs thus remained popular and safe from
critiques throughout the twentieth century.12 Conservative populism did
not remain oppositional, it also proved constructive as it sought to
expand social benefits to the “deserving” people. Promises to expand
the welfare state was part of Richard Nixon’s domestic agenda in the
early 1970s. In recent years, members of the Tea Party movement have
voiced their unwavering support for Social Security and Medicare, while
Donald Trump pledged to protect those very programs against the fiscal
hawks of the Republican Party during the 2016 campaign. This contribu-
tion demonstrates that, while conservative populism has actively worked
to undermine and shrink the welfare state on ideological grounds, the
rhetoric has paradoxically also been used by politicians and citizens who
have at times demanded more, not less, from government.
The first section investigates how welfare became central to conserva-
tive populism, which remained a marginal discourse in the early 1960s.
The second section shows how the rhetoric made its way into national
politics: by the late 1960s, conservative populism and attacks on welfare
had evidently become a majority discourse that was no longer restricted
to the ultra-right. Concomitantly, the third section investigates, the early
11 Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History, Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2011, pp. 7, 255–256.
12 Molly Michelmore, Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of
American Liberalism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 5–6.
186 T. BOUSSAC
1970s was also a time of promises to expand social benefits to the middle
class, based on the false assumption that social policy had until then been
restricted to racial minorities. Between the mid-1970s and the 1990s, an
era marked by a neoliberal and punitive turn in social policy, promises
to curb welfare waste so as to protect taxpayers against an unfair system
superseded pledges to expand social benefits. After the 2008 crisis and
the passage of Affordable Care Act, the last section shows, demands for
greater social protection for the white working- and middle-classes resur-
faced and allowed for the resurgence of conservative populist discourses
that both demonized “undeserving recipients” of aid and praised the
hardworking classes of America.
Conservatives Against Welfare

and “Vote-Hungry Politicians”:
A Marginal Discourse in the Early 1960s
As public assistance to the poor and Aid to Dependent Children in partic-
ular came under fire in the postwar era, welfare progressively became
central to conservative populism at a time when it remained a marginal
discourse in American politics. Allegations of fraud flourished in the press
after World War II as more and more people received the program, so as
to reach 3 million recipients by 1960.13 A greater percentage of welfare
mothers in the 1950s and early 1960s were divorced, deserted or had
never been married, fueling critiques that the program encouraged family
breakup and illegitimacy. Finally, because African Americans were more
likely to be poor and less likely to have access to steady employment and
social insurance programs, public assistance rolls also became increasingly
black.14 As Michael Kate and Lorrin Thomas have shown, “welfare,” soon
a negative code word for public assistance to unwed mothers of color,
became widely unpopular in the second half of the twentieth century
13 Jennifer Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of

Liberal Reform, 1945–1965, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006,
p. 4.
14 Black families made up 14% of ADC rolls in 1938 and 30% in 1948. Premilla
Nadasen, Jennifer Mittelstadt, Marisa Chappell (eds.), Welfare in the United States: A
History with Documents, 1935–1996, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009, p. 20.
as the program was perceived as serving lazy, immoral, mostly Black

recipients.15
In the summer of 1961, a controversy that arose in the small city
of Newburgh, New York, helped place welfare at the core of conserva-
tive populism. By 1960, Newburgh, once a thriving port on the Hudson
River, was an industrial city of some 30,979 inhabitants that underwent
both population loss and economic decline. City officials assumed that
welfare costs and local taxes were mounting because of the in-migration
of African Americans from the South, who were held responsible for rising
crime rates and the spread of slum housing in the city.16
On June 20, 1961, the city council adopted 13 new welfare regulations
that were meant, as city manager Joseph Mitchell put it, to “curtail immi-
gration, save money and halt blight” in Newburgh.17 All able-bodied
men on welfare would be required to work for the city’s building main-
tenance.18 Aid would also be denied to all recipients who had refused an
employment offer or who had voluntarily left a job. Women who received
Aid to Dependent Children would be removed from the rolls if they
gave birth to an illegitimate child while receiving aid. A family could be
eligible for welfare for no longer than three months and newcomers who
applied to welfare had to show evidence that they had come to Newburgh
because they had been made a “concrete offer of employment, similar to
that required of foreign immigrants.”19 Even though the plan was rapidly
ruled illegal by the New York Supreme Court, it was widely supported by
the public and rising conservative hopefuls like the Senator of Arizona
Barry Goldwater.20 As the plan was extensively covered in the national
15 Michael Katz, Lorrin Thomas, “The Invention of ‘Welfare’ in America”, Journal of

Policy History, 10:4, 1998, pp. 399–418 (p. 400).
16 The African American population nearly tripled in Newburgh in the 1950s so as to
reach 17% of the total population. Report of the Committee to Study Welfare Operations
to City Manager Joseph Mitchell, 8 May 1961, 16. Box. 4, Folder “Newburgh Report to
Mitchell”. Moreland Commission on Welfare. Correspondence and Subject Files. 1961–
1963. New York State Archives.
17 Kathryn D. Goodwin, memo to William L., Mitchell. July 21, 1961. Box 2000-
27. Folder “Public assistance, Newburgh, NY. 1961”, Archives of the Social Security
Administration.
18 “Newburgh Welfare Rules”, The New York Times, 24 June 1961.
19 Ibid.
20 “Court Injunction Signed on Newburgh Code”, The New York Times, 26 August
1961.
188 T. BOUSSAC
press, Newburgh opened “postwar America’s first national debate” over

welfare, fraud, work, and illegitimacy.21
Critiques of Aid to Dependent Children rapidly took on populist
undertones as Newburgh’s city manager Joseph Mitchell and his
supporters praised the principle of popular revolt against government
corruption and against the tyranny of a welfare state that acted against the
people. Joseph Mitchell lambasted corrupt liberals and university-trained
social workers who were deemed responsible for Newburgh’s and the
nation’s “welfare mess”—an expression that was more and more used to
describe the public assistance system. “The college-trained social worker
has been exposed to the whole equalitarian concept which is being taught
in the social schools,” Mitchell ranted, “they are getting background
which is not reducing welfare costs but increasing them.”22 “We now
have ‘professionals’, ‘directors’, ‘commissioners’, ‘resource consultants’,”
Mitchell also told a crowd of conservative students in New Jersey, and
social welfare experts were to blame for creating “a monstrosity which is
no longer responsible to the people, the executives or the legislatures.”23
The conservative press applauded the plan for dealing a much-awaited
blow to the corrupt liberals who distributed undeserved benefits to be
reelected. “Liberals well know that the larger the number of people
collecting government benefits, the bigger the captive vote for Liberal
candidates for office” wrote Human Events, one of the leading conser-
vative magazines of the day.24 For the Wall Street Journal, Newburgh
was “simply trying to separate the crooks and chiselers from the unfortu-
nate people in genuine distress.”25 American citizens did not want their
country to become a “parasite’s paradise,” the Journal stressed, but had
21 Lisa Levenstein, “From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms:
Two Chapters in the Public Discourse on Welfare in the United States, 1960–1961”,
Journal of Women’s History, 4:11, 2000, pp. 10–33 (p. 17).
22 “Newburgh to Use ‘Thought Control’”, The New York Times, 4 August 1961.
23 Joseph Mitchell, “What More Could a Communist Ask?”, 11 August 1961. Keating
papers.
24 “Newburgh Secedes from the Welfare State”, Human Events, XVIII:28, 14 July
1961.
25 “Newburgh’s Crime”, The Wall Street Journal, 10 July 1961.
little power against “politicians” who considered “loose dispensing of

public funds” as “a vote-getting issue.”26
The Newburgh reform had strong popular support, especially among
middle-class and upper-middle-class residents from suburban New York.27
Those who wrote to their elected officials in support of Joseph Mitchell’s
reform denounced a welfare system that was profoundly unfair to the
taxpayers. They formulated a binary vision of American society, which
they saw as divided into two antagonistic classes: virtuous taxpayers and
“welfare chiselers,” who unduly lived off the taxpayers’ back. “It is time
that the people who work and pay taxes quit supporting the lazy and
inefficient,” wrote Francis Murray Jr. to New York Senator Kenneth
Keating.28 Mrs. Lund from Manhattan “objected to having” her “taxes
used to provide assistance for men too lazy to work and to support the
promiscuous activities of women already burdened with numbers of ille-
gitimate children.”29 They lambasted the corruption of liberal officials
and social workers who gave out undeserved benefits for electoral reasons.
“Don’t let pressure groups of ‘the welfare state’, ‘do-gooders’, ‘minority
associations’ influence your opinions of welfare law revitalization,” wrote
a Newburgh resident to Senator Keating. “Represent the people who
elect you to your office,” he warned. “They are people who are really
concerned about the situation.”30
The Newburgh controversy popularized the idea that the welfare state
benefitted undeserving minorities at the expense of the taxpayers who, by
contrast, received little from it. This, in fact, was by and large a fiction. As
historian Ira Katznelson has demonstrated, middle-class whites had bene-
fitted from public spending disproportionately since the postwar years,
26 William Henry Chamberlain, “Parasite’s Paradise”, The Wall Street Journal, 25 July
1961.
27 The following observations are based on the study of a corpus of 258 letters sent
to the Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, the Senator Kenneth Keating, the US
Representative Katharine Saint George, the Mayor of New York Robert Wagner Jr., the
Newburgh Evening News and The New York Times, primarily between June and August
1961.
28 Francis Murray Jr., letter to Kenneth Keating, 18 July 1961. Keating papers.
29 Mrs. Daniel Lund, letter to Kenneth Keating, 22 July 1961. Keating papers.
30 Lloyd Boyea, letter to Kenneth Keating, 29 June 1961. Keating papers.
190 T. BOUSSAC
notably in the form of government-backed loans that had largely subsi-

dized homeownership for families of veterans.31 Working taxpayers were
also entitled to generous social insurance benefits, notably Social Security,
an old-age insurance program financed by payroll taxes. Unlike public
assistance to the non-working poor, wage-based social insurance programs
were not perceived as “welfare” but as an annuity that provided workers
with legitimate benefits.32
In many ways, Newburgh was an anomaly in the postwar heyday
of prosperity and in the optimism of the Kennedy years. Denouncing
liberal corruption and the abuses of the welfare state remained a marginal
discourse used by rising conservative hopefuls. In a campaign speech at
Boise, Idaho, in September 1964, Barry Goldwater, who had just won
the Republican presidential nomination against the party’s liberal wing,
blamed the “power mad” Johnson administration for rising crime rates in
American cities, for which the welfare state was responsible.33 Welfare had
created a sense of entitlement among recipients, the Senator of Arizona
explained, which led them “to believe that they could rightfully take from
anyone who has more than they.” “This can never again be truly a nation
of law and order until it is again fully a nation of responsible citizens.”
The same year, Phyllis Schlafly, an anti-communist activist who would
gain national recognition among conservative circles through her influ-
ential book A Choice, Not an Echo, railed at “the New York kingmakers”
within the Republican Party, who were “not opposed to the New Deal
– New Frontier – Fast Deal policy of deficit financing” which resulted “in
buying the people’s votes with their own money.”34
31 Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold Story of Racial
Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. On how
public spending helped Americans access the middle-class, see also Kenneth T. Jackson,
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985.
32 Molly Michelmore, Tax and Spend, p. 6.
33 Charles Mohr, “Goldwater Links the Welfare State to Rise in Crime”, The New York
Times, 11 September 1964. On the Goldwater campaign, see Rick Perlstein, Before the
Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, New York: Hill
and Wang, 2001.
34 Phyllis Schlafly, A Choice, Not an Echo, 1964, p. 116. Phyllis Schlafly became the
champion of anti-feminism in the 1970s as she organized the campaign against the Equal
Rights Amendment. See Donald Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism:
A Woman’s Crusade, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
The federal government’s reach over social policy expanded massively

in the 1960s as Lyndon Johnson announced an “unconditional War on
Poverty.”35 In reaction, the wave of resentment that had been voiced
during the Newburgh controversy grew stronger. By the late 1960s,
welfare populism had evidently become a majority discourse that was no
longer restricted to the ultra-right and the conservative press.
Race, “Limousine Liberals” and “The

Welfare Mess”: Conservative Populism
Takes Center Stage (1964–1970)
The War on Poverty, the militancy of the welfare rights movements, the
onset of affirmative action policies and the urban riots of the 1960s
catalyzed populist attacks on what was perceived as the excesses of the
welfare state and the civil rights movement.36 Meanwhile, concerns over
a “culture of poverty” and the “tangle of pathology” that kept female-
headed African American families dependent on welfare, as posited by
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, reinforced the stereotype of a
welfare class that would remain immune to the effect of anti-poverty
measures.37 Consequently, “welfare” assumed clearly negative and racial
connotations throughout the decade.38 By the late 1960s, populist attacks
on welfare had become central in the campaign rhetoric of politicians who
sought electoral benefits from deriding both the welfare state and the
liberal establishment who had crafted it.
In 1964, the segregationist Governor of Alabama George Wallace,
a champion of working-class populism, ran against Lyndon Johnson in
35 Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union Address, 8 January 1964.

36 On the welfare rights movement, see Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights:
Politics and Poverty in Modern America, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2007.
37 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”,
Office of Policy Planning and Research. United States Department of Labor, 1965.
See also Michael Katz, The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with
Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge:
Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001.
38 Katz and Thomas, “The Invention of ‘Welfare’ in America”, p. 400.
192 T. BOUSSAC
the Democratic primary.39 George Wallace’s populism saw the “people”

he addressed as the victims of a liberal establishment that concentrated
welfare benefits toward minorities and sought to pit the interests of the
common man against those of liberal officials. He lambasted the hypocrisy
of “limousine liberals” who promoted racial integration of public schools
when they could send their own children to private schools and promised
to stand up for the little people, in his own words “the man in the
textile mill, the barber, the beautician, the truck driver, the little busi-
ness man” against the excesses of liberalism.40 In 1964, he denounced
the “unnatural and unhealthy accumulation of power in the hands of
an all-powerful central bureaucracy” and got some of his best scores in
the white neighborhoods of Gary, Indiana, and Milwaukee, where facto-
ries had started to lay off workers.41 In 1968, George Wallace vowed to
protect hardworking people from the liberal “sob-sisters” and “bleeding-
heart sociologists” who favored welfare programs and racial integration
over get-tough, law-and-order policies in the face of the urban riots that
had spread across the country.42 Despite winning 13.6% of the popular
vote, Wallace did not succeed in winning over white working-class voters
in the North, who instead turned to the Democratic candidate Hubert
Humphrey.43 Although a failure, Wallace’s presidential bids yet demon-
strated the strength of conservative populism as a powerful rhetoric that
rapidly made its way into mainstream politics.
By the end of the 1960s, the populist theme of liberal betrayal, which
posited that liberals were too busy wooing the minority vote to repre-
sent the interests of the middle class, had largely permeated the campaign
rhetoric of Republican candidates across the nation. In 1966, Ronald
Reagan sought to “relieve California taxpayers of the heaviest welfare
burden carried by any state.”44 In 1968, Richard Nixon sought to defend
the interests of the “silent majority” of American citizens, the “forgotten

40 Rieder, “The Rise of the Silent Majority”, p. 249.
41 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conser-
vatism, and the Transformation of American Politics, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1995, p. 205; Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, p. 233.
42 Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 334.
44 Norman Kempster, “Creative Society: Reagan Plans to Bear Down on State Welfare
Programs”, Madera Tribune, 75:132, 18 November 1966, p. 3.
Americans” who “worked,” “paid their taxes” and had grown resentful of
urban unrest, anti-Vietnam demonstrations and the hedonistic counter-
culture.45 As historian Matthew Lassiter has shown, the “silent majority”
was a political construct that obscured differences between the working-
and middle-classes, northern and southern whites and, as a homogeneous
group, saw them as both the heart and soul of America and the victims
of liberal politics.46 By the late 1960s, Jonathan Rieder explains, appeals
to the “silent majority” had become an efficient campaign rhetoric that
enabled Richard Nixon to capture former Democratic voters in the urban
north.47
Welfare proved central in the populist appeal to the “silent majority.”
In his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican convention, Nixon
notably declared that “for the past five years,” the country had “been
deluged by government programs for the unemployed, programs for the
cities, programs for the poor, and we have reaped from these programs
an ugly harvest of frustration, violence and failure across the land.” As
Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew put it in 1970, “the elite,” which
“sneered at honesty, thrift, hard work, prudence and common decency,”
had “brought a permissiveness that in turn had resulted in a shockingly
warped sense of values.”48 Liberal permissiveness toward racial minorities
in the form of welfare benefits, Nixon and Agnew argued, had only bred
crime and immorality at the expense of honest citizens.
A similar populist appeal infused city politics in the late 1960s, as cham-
pions of the white working class derided the liberal elite who had enabled
the welfare state to grow at the expense of the taxpayers. During the 1969
mayoral race in New York City, the Republican Party chose not to endorse
the incumbent Republican mayor John Lindsay, who as a liberal stood in
sharp contrast with the conservative turn that characterized Republican
politics in the late 1960s. Instead, Republicans nominated John Marchi,
a State Senator from Staten Island who ran as a law and order, anti-
welfare candidate. “The Lindsay administration has opened the welfare
floodgates in New York City,” Marchi declared during a 1969 campaign
45 Richard Nixon, Acceptance speech at RNC, 8 August 1968.

46 Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
194 T. BOUSSAC
speech, and welfare was now considered “as a right and a way of life” by
recipients who “broke the backs of the productive, working people.”49
No one knew the extent of fraud, he claimed, “because the administra-
tion had assiduously avoided accurate records and controls” since John
Lindsay ran after the votes of his “welfare constituency.”50 Even though
John Lindsay was reelected, the 1969 mayoral campaign in New York had
set the tone for the evolution of welfare politics in the 1970s.
Extending the Welfare State

to the “Silent Majority” in the Early 1970s
The dual discourse on welfare lied at the core of Richard Nixon’s
domestic agenda in the early 1970s: where Wallace’s conservative
populism had been mostly oppositional, Nixon’s would be constructive.
Rather than roll back the welfare state, the Nixon administration thus
moved to expend the benefits of the welfare state to the working poor
and two-parent families—in other words, to the “the Silent Majority”
which he claimed had until then been left behind by liberals. Nixon’s
attempt at extending the welfare state to the working poor was part of
strategy targeted toward the white working-class neighborhoods of the
urban north in the early 1970s.51 The “blue-collar strategy” rested on
displayed proximity with labor unions, restoring law and order in Amer-
ican cities and building on the support of many blue-collar workers for
Nixon’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia.52 Welfare reform also proved
central to the attempt at capturing the discontent of former Democratic
voters so as to form a new Republican majority in the early 1970s.
Two publications helped put welfare at the core of Republican poli-
tics. In 1969, Kevin Phillips, a former advisor to Richard Nixon in the
49 “Welfare”, Statement issued by Senator John J. Marchi, 12 June 1969. Box 122,
folder “Welfare”, Senator John J. Marchi Manuscript Collection, Series 6: Campaigns,
Mayoral Campaign, Press releases, 1969. College of Staten Island Library, City University
of New York (hereafter Marchi papers).
50 “Remarks by Senator John Marchi at Welfare News Conference”, 24 September
1969; “Marchi Calls for Resignation of Welfare Chiefs”, press release, 25 July 1969.
Marchi papers.
51 Michelmore, Tax and Spend, p. 97.
52 Jefferson Cowie, “Nixon’s Class Struggle: Romancing the New Right Worker, 1969–
1973”, Labor History, 43:3, 2002, pp. 257–283 (p. 260).
1968 election, published a book that most inspired the strategy. In The
Emerging Republican Majority, Phillips argued that Nixon’s victory over
Hubert Humphrey, although very narrow, had heralded a significant
realignment in American politics: Republicans had to target working-class
whites who were turning away from Democratic liberalism and had been
sensitive to George Wallace’s populist rhetoric. Liberalism had become
a sort of “welfare establishmentarianism,” Phillips argued, explaining
that “the Liberal Establishment” had “vested interests in misleading and
unsuccessful programs” for urban Blacks.53 “The emerging Republican
majority spoke clearly in 1968 for a shift away from the sociological
jurisprudence, moral permissiveness, experimental residential, welfare and
educational programming and massive federal spending,” he concluded.54
Second, in an influential 1969 article, journalist Pete Hamill claimed that
welfare, race, and the aloofness of the liberal establishment were central
to “the revolt of the lower middle class.” “The niggers, they don’t worry
about it,” declared a Brooklyn worker cited by Hamill.55 “They take the
welfare and sit out on the stoop drinkin’ cheap wine and throwin’ the
bottles on the street. They never gotta walk outta the house. (…) What
the hell does Lindsay [ed. the Mayor of New York] care about me?”
Nixon’s advisors thereafter sought to extend income-support programs
to working-class whites so as to foster their participation in the new
Republican majority.
The Nixon administration thus set out to provide broader social bene-
fits to the working poor through comprehensive welfare reform. Its aim
was to end “the unfairness in a system that had become unfair to the
welfare recipient, unfair to the working poor, and unfair to the taxpayer,”
Nixon declared in an 8 August 1969 speech.56 “It breaks up homes. It
often penalizes work. It robs recipients of dignity. And it grows.” The
new Family Assistance Plan (FAP) would provide all American families
with children, including two-parent families and families of the working
poor, with a guaranteed annual income. In other words, welfare would no
longer be restricted to the non-working poor, whom the public assumed
53 Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, New Rochelle, NY: Arlington
House, 1969, pp. 465, 552.
54 Ibid., p. 552.
55 Hamill, Pete. “The Revolt of the Lower Middle Class”, New York Magazine, 4 April
1969.
56 Richard Nixon, Address to the Nation on Domestic Programs, 8 August 1969.
196 T. BOUSSAC
were African Americans, and would be extended to the deserving working

poor.57
Such promises to expand welfare benefits did not survive the early
1970s. The FAP was not adopted. After it was rejected by the Senate
Finance Committee, the Nixon administration no longer sought to attract
voters with promises of greater benefits. As historian Molly Michel-
more has noted, the administration instead turned to tax reform to
appeal to citizens weary of paying taxes to finance the welfare state.58
Tax reductions would confirm the President’s position as the “visible
and outspoken champion of the Forgotten American” and force the
Democrats to “choose between the working class outraged by the excesses
of the programs and the welfare class,” argued advisor Pat Buchanan in
1971.59
As Republican politics pitted taxpayers’ rights against welfare rights,
lambasting welfare and its advocates became the new norm in the 1970s.
The New York Times itself denounced the “mess” and “waste” caused by
“malingerers” and “welfare cheats” who took advantage of the “colossal
mess” within the system.60 Social workers’ laxity was to blame. An inves-
tigation conducted in New York City had revealed that “welfare workers
napped on the job,” “took time out for exercising or knitting or reading
and, in one case, for setting up a makeshift beauty parlor.”61 Social
workers, like welfare recipients, had become parasites who lived off the
system. Starting in the mid-1970s, attacking welfare as a liberal project
aimed toward the undeserving poor at the expense of the taxpayers reso-
lutely remained a core argument for national conservative leaders who
championed small government and taxpayers’ rights.
57 On Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan and the family wage, see Chappell, The War
on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America; Michelmore, Molly, Tax
and Spend; Alice O’Connor, “The False Dawn of Poor-Law Reform: Nixon, Carter, and
the Quest for a Guaranteed Income”, Journal of Policy History, 10:1, January 1998,
pp. 99–129.
59 Ibid., p. 120. Patrick Buchanan served as political strategist under Richard Nixon
and later became communications director at the White House during the Reagan Pres-
idency. In the 1990s, he sought the Republican presidential nomination twice and was
firmly opposed to internationalism and lambasted the “New World order”. See Kazin, The
Populist Persuasion, p. 269.
60 “The Welfare Mess”, The New York Times, 8 December 1971.
61 Ibid.
“Ending Welfare as We Know It” (1976–1996)

Between the mid-1970s and the 1990s, an era marked by a neoliberal
and punitive turn in social policy, promises to curb welfare waste and
even terminate welfare programs so as to protect taxpayers against an
unfair social system superseded pledges to expand social benefits.62 Anti-
welfarism and taxpayers’ rights largely became Ronald Reagan’s political
trademark. In a 1976 campaign speech, he referred to the case of Linda
Taylor, a welfare mother from Chicago who had been charged with
fraud, and lambasted the “welfare queens” who drove Cadillacs while
claiming benefits. “She has 80 names, 36 addresses, 12 Social Security
cards,” Reagan told the audience, who he stressed was made up of “hard-
working people” who paid their taxes.63 In August 1981, the Omnibus
Budget Reconciliation Act and the Economic Recovery and Tax Act
slashed federal welfare programs. The Reagan tax cuts sought to defend
the rights of taxpayers in the face of illegitimate welfare benefits, leading
historian Molly Michelmore to call them “a populist appeal to voters as
taxpayers.”64 28% of the cuts were made into social programs for the
poor, notably Food Stamps and AFDC, the amount of which declined by
17% between 1980 and 1988.65 Despite the budget cuts, the programs
did not disappear altogether. They were reoriented toward the goal of
enforcing marriage and work onto welfare recipients. The Family Support
Act of 1988 notably introduced mandatory job training or work hours for
recipients.66
62 On the punitive turn in social policy, see Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty
to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2016; Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprison-
ment in 1970s America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017; Loïc Wacquant,
Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, Durham: Duke
University Press, 2009.
63 “Welfare Queen Become Issue in Reagan Campaign”, The New York Times, 15
February 1976.
65 Ibid., p. 142.
66 Kaaryn Gustafson, Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of
Poverty, New York: New York University Press, 2011, p. 40.
198 T. BOUSSAC
By the late 1980s, the ideological spectrum of American politics had

shifted to the right as a result of Republican attacks on the “liberal estab-
lishment” and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Conservative populist
undertones were no longer the language of the Republican right.
In 1992, Bill Clinton, a Third Way Democrat, promised to “fight for
the forgotten middle-classes” and “put the people first,” as heralded by
the title of his book and campaign slogan, Putting the People First.67
The slogan went hand in hand with another campaign promise. Clinton
pledged to “end welfare as we know it” by putting forward new princi-
ples in welfare policy: “making work pay,” limiting duration of aid, and
enforcing liability for child support.68 In 1994, Newt Gingrich, a conser-
vative Representative from Georgia who would later become Speaker of
the House, proposed a comprehensive welfare reform in his Contract with
America, which would “encourage people to work, not have children out
of wedlock.”69 In a typically populist rhetoric, the Contract also sought
to “replace career politicians,” who considered politics as a “lifetime job,”
with “citizen legislators.” The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act, engineered by the Republican Congress
and signed into law by President Clinton, replaced AFDC with the new
Temporary Aid for Needy Families. A watershed in the history of the
welfare state, the new program would only provide temporary aid and
required recipients to work while receiving aid.70
While aid to the poor was reduced drastically, the federal government
did not turn away from social spending for the middle class. Starting
in the 1970s, rather than giving out direct benefits, social spending
increasingly took the form of hidden expenditures within what sociol-
ogist Suzanne Mettler has called the “submerged state.”71 Rather than
providing direct transfers, social benefits to the middle class were increas-
ingly provided through tax breaks, tax credits, or government-subsidized
67 On Bill Clinton, see Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, pp. 270–276.

68 Reese, Backlash Against Welfare Mothers, p. 174.
69 Newt Gingrich, “A Contract with America”, p. 2. Available at: https://www.rialto.
k12.ca.us/rhs/planetwhited/AP%20PDF%20Docs/Unit%2014/CONTRAC7.PDF.
70 Gustafson, Cheating Welfare, p. 44.
71 Susan Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine
American Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 2. See also Christo-
pher Howard, The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United
States, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
loans. This, however, obliterated the role of government in social protec-

tion, which eventually created a “government-citizen disconnect” that
fueled further skepticism of government.72
Conservative Populism After

the Affordable Care Act
The divide over social policy, taxpayers’ rights, and fiscal reciprocity
resurfaced in American politics in 2009 after the adoption of President
Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The dual populist discourse on welfare
that had characterized the early 1970s galvanized conservatives the midst
of the Great Recession. The Tea Party movement, a social movement that
protested against small government, low taxes, and for religious freedom,
denounced the Affordable Care Act as government takeover of the health-
care sector, an expansion of a welfare state that many deemed already
too big and too costly.73 Taxation was central to the concerns of Tea
Partiers, who resented having to pay for federal social policy benefitting
a population they considered undeserving of aid. Critical of govern-
ment corruption, Tea Partiers divided American society into two classes:
hardworking taxpayers on the one hand, and a group of supposedly
underserving recipients of government largesse on the other—the unem-
ployed, immigrants, the youth, freeloaders who were given handouts by
aloof federal legislators.74
Paradoxically, members of the Tea Party movement also voiced unwa-
vering support for such programs as Medicare or Social Security, which
they saw as rewarding the elderly for a life of hard work.75 In other
words, social benefits were deemed legitimate when they were perceived
as a form of insurance that workers had earned for themselves, while
Obamacare was seen as a new handout to low-income Americans. “Hands
72 Susan Mettler, The Government-Citizen Disconnect, New York: Russell Sage Founda-
tion, 2018, p. 5.
73 Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
74 Ibid., 56; Romain Huret, “Le mouvement Tea Party, une illusion?”, Outre-Terre
37:3, 2013, pp. 67–75.
75 Scockpol and Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conser-
vatism, p. 63.
200 T. BOUSSAC
off my Medicare” yelled a Tea Partier to a Republican legislator at a gath-

ering in South Carolina, suggesting that Medicare, in his mind, was not
a federal program and that social programs for the deserving had to be
fought for against government takeover.76 The comment exemplified the
“government-citizen disconnect” described by Suzanne Mettler. As they
demanded more social protection for the middle class and less for the
underserving, Tea Partiers failed to acknowledge the central role federal
benefits did play in their lives. As the role of government in social protec-
tion became more obscure and as public benefits had become increasingly
administered by private providers since the 1970s, the very architecture
of American social policies allowed for greater distrust of Washington.77
The “us versus them” rhetoric also infused Donald Trump’s 2016
campaign, as the real estate tycoon pledged to defend the “laid off
factory workers” from the vested interests of Washington politicians, from
“crooked” Hilary Clinton to “lying” Ted Cruz.78 Social policy was again
a central theme in Donald Trump’s campaign. While he promised to
“repeal and replace” Obamacare, he also vowed to protect Social Secu-
rity and Medicare, namely, social protection for workers, against the fiscal
hawks of the Republican Party.79 As he promised to give “a voice” to
“the forgotten men and women” of America, Donald Trump’s pledge to
end Obamacare went hand in hand with promises to “drain the swamp”
and end corruption in Washington.80
Conclusion
Since the early 1960s, welfare has been a central component of
what Michael Kazin or Jonathan Rieder have termed “conservative
populism”—the appeal to white, middle-class voters as taxpayers over-
whelmed by the cost of liberal largesse toward racial minorities.81 The
76 Mettler, The Submerged State, p. 4.

77 Ibid., p. 14.
78 Donald Trump, “2016 RNC Draft Speech Transcript”, Politico, 21 July 2016.
79 E. J Dionne, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea
Party and Beyond, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016, pp. 434–438.
80 Donald Trump, “2016 RNC Speech”.
81 Rieder, “The Rise of the Silent Majority”, p. 243; Kazin, The Populist Persuasion,
p. 4.
image of a welfare elite maintained in power by the welfare vote stood

in sharp contrast with conservatives’ promise to protect Middle America
by reducing taxes and restoring law and order in the streets. However,
the two-track nature of the American welfare state, split between insur-
ance and assistance programs, allowed for a paradoxical populist appeal.
Politicians and citizens who attacked public spending for the non-working
poor failed to acknowledge that white, middle-class taxpayers had also
largely benefitted from government spending since the postwar years.
Promises to scale down assistance to the poor were sometimes coupled
with pledges to maintain and even expand benefits for those perceived
as deserving, working people—now a prominent theme in contemporary
American politics. While conservative populism has worked to undermine
the welfare state, the rhetoric has paradoxically been used by politi-
cians and citizens who have at times demanded more, not less, from
government.
CHAPTER 10
The Tea Party Movement in Pennsylvania:

A New Brand of Populism?
Marion Douzou
Since its birth in 2009, disagreements between scholars have emerged

about the nature of the Tea Party movement. Political scientist Anthony
DiMaggio claims it is a top-down movement orchestrated by Washington
elites and rich billionaires1 while others see it as a genuine grassroots
movement or in the case of Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson as
a mix between these two extremes.2 Historian Charles Postel deems it
is not a populist but a conservative movement,3 while historian Ronald
1 Anthony DiMaggio, The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate
Media in the Age of Obama, Monthly Review Press, 2011, 287 pp.
2 Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party And The Remaking of American
Conservatism, Oxford University Press, 2012, 272 pp.
3 Charles Postel, “The Tea Party in Historical Perspective: A Conservative Response to
a Crisis of Political Economy”, in Lawrence Rosenthal, Christine Trost (eds.), Steep: The
Precipituous Rise of the Tea Party, University of California Press, 2012, p. 29.
M. Douzou (B)
University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_10
204 M. DOUZOU
Formisano inscribes the movement in the populist tradition.4 These

debates among scholars led me to conduct an in-depth study of the
Tea Party movement. Since studying the Tea Party at the national level
would have made it difficult to answer these questions as it would have
inevitably downplayed the role of its grassroots branch, I decided to focus
my research on one state—Pennsylvania. It seemed particularly interesting
as this state is ordinarily thought of as moderate. However, in 2010,
several Republicans were elected with the support of the Tea Party.5 Since
then, the state legislature has seen a significant increase of the number
of Republican and conservative lawmakers6 and in the 2016 presidential
election, Donald Trump carried the state.7
My article is based on the fieldwork I did in 2014–2015.8 I spent
nine months interviewing Tea Party activists and elected officials but
also attending their monthly meetings,9 accompanying them on lobbying
sessions and demonstrations. I discovered a much more active movement
than what I thought I would find but also a much more complex galaxy of
top-down and grassroots groups, think tanks and activists that were eager
to see conservative principles put into action even at the risk of alienating
fellow Republicans.
This article focuses on the Tea Party as a populist movement using
Cas Mudde’s definition of the term. Indeed, he presents it as “a thin-
centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into
two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus ‘the
corrupt elite’” and which argues that “politics should be an expression
4 Ronald Formisano, The Tea Party: A Brief History, John Hopkins University Press,
2012, 152 pp.
5 In 2010, Mike Kelly and Pat Toomey who both received support from Tea Party
groups in the state were elected. The first became the representative for Pennsylvania’s
16th district and the latter started his term as Pennsylvania’s junior senator.
6 In 2008, there were 104 Democrats and 99 Republicans in the State assembly. In
2010, the number of Democrats dropped to 91 and that of Republicans rose to 112. In
2016, the trend continued with 82 Democrats and 121 Republicans.
7 Donald Trump won 48.2% of the vote and Hilary Clinton 47.2%: https://www.nyt
imes.com/elections/results/pennsylvania. Accessed on June 21, 2019.
8 This fieldwork was made possible thanks to a scholarship from the Georges Lurcy
Foundation.
9 Each grassroots group held monthly meetings. At these events, they discussed bills
that were about to be voted on and the tactics they could put in place. A speaker was
also invited to address a topic like immigration, Obama’s healthcare law, gun rights, etc.
10 THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA … 205
of the ‘volonté générale’ (general will) of the people.”10 However, the

goal of this article is not simply to highlight the movement’s populism
but to show that it has real consequences on its organization. I argue
that the rhetoric Tea Party activists used, the very nature of the move-
ment, and the tactics they put in place aim at changing the Republican
Party from within and taking the power away from politicians and giving
it back to the “people.” In this sense, populist rhetoric was the glue
that bound an otherwise very diverse conservative movement together by
giving it a common language, a common frame but also common aims.
I will first examine the historical roots of Tea Party activists’ frustration
toward politicians and their use of populist rhetoric. Then, I will dwell
on the composition of the movement before showing how the tactics
they use aim at changing the Republican Party as well as the conservative
movement from within.
A Common Language: Populist Rhetoric Fueled

by Deep-Seated Resentment and a Sense of Betrayal
In their book Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort,11
Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons identify four pillars of right-wing
populist movements. First, they usually tell a producerist narrative that
“posits a noble hard-working middle group constantly in conflict with
lazy, malevolent, or sinful parasites at the top and bottom of the social
order.”12 Second, they tend to scapegoat these parasitic groups. Third,
their social analysis sees simple conspiracies behind historical events and
finally they often have apocalyptic and millennial visions of social change.
Even though the political objectives of Tea Party groups in Pennsyl-
vania may have varied, they all shared these characteristics. In their
producerist narrative, they usually identified three categories in the popu-
lation as “lazy, malevolent, or sinful parasites”: welfare recipients, illegal
immigrants, and politicians.
10 Cas Mudde, Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford
11 Chip Berlet, Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for
Comfort, The Guilford Press, 2000, 499 pp.
12 Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyon, op. cit., p. 348.
206 M. DOUZOU
Welfare recipients were presented as people who were lazy and were
given handouts while “real Americans” worked hard to feed their fami-
lies. Testimonies about the “undeserving poor” were common place and
led to calls for an end to social welfare programs. Illegal immigrants were
singled out as another parasitic group that took advantage of hardworking
Americans. This rhetoric was very much present in militia groups like
the Sheriff’s brigade or the Oathkeepers who attended Tea Party meet-
ings regularly. According to them, newly arrived immigrants increased
the terrorist threat and enhanced the risk of a spread of diseases. When
children who had just crossed the Mexican border were brought to
Pennsylvania, Tea Party activists were scared about the health risk they
presented for citizens as well as frustrated at the financial burden they
were putting on the American healthcare system.13 Immigrants who had
been in the U.S. for years did not get special treatment: they were seen
as having broken the law and could not be given citizenship as a result.
For militia groups, a clear distinction was made between “real,” white,
hardworking Americans and illegal immigrants. Their meetings were often
organized around testimonies from the victim of a crime committed by an
illegal alien or around the testimonies of legal immigrants who had come
to the U.S. legally, often fleeing communist regimes, and were upstanding
citizens, working alongside the group.
These militia groups belonged to the same Tea Party galaxy as the
more libertarian-oriented Tea Party groups14 who did not address illegal
immigration at all and focused on free markets, a reduction of taxa-
tion and the role of the government. At the national level, the same
ideological differences existed: if a lot of conservative organizations
opposed illegal immigration, the Koch brothers who financed Americans
for Prosperity were in favor of finding a compromise for “dreamers.”15
The common characteristic between libertarian-leaning organizations and
13 Petty Precious, “Protest Over Immigrant Children at KidsPeace Got Loud, Remained
Peaceful, Police Say”, LehighValleylive.com, July 25, 2014: https://www.lehighvalleylive.
com/lehigh-county/2014/07/protest_over_immigrant_childre.html. Accessed on June
21, 2019.
14 The Valley Forge Revolutionaries and Citizens for Liberty were two of the groups that
were organized around libertarian principles.
15 The term “Dreamers” refers to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children
but were granted legal status by the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors
(DREAM) Act, which was passed in 2001.
militia groups, and this leads me to the third category mentioned at the
beginning, was their anger toward corrupt and unprincipled politicians.
Elected officials were often the target be it on signs during demonstra-
tions or in the themes of the events Tea Party groups organized. This
anti-politician populist rhetoric could be extremely violent. Here are three
examples that range from threats to unseat elected politicians to the
mention of physically harming them:
“Politicians are like diapers: They both need changing regularly and for the
same reason”,16 “We are here to give corrupt public servants end-of-job
counseling”,17 “Here at Citizens for Liberty, we just don’t have ‘feel good
meetings’, we take action and skin politicians”.18
As these quotes demonstrate, Tea Party activists expressed deep-seated

anger toward elected officials. However, their most violent rhetoric was
often directed at Republican politicians, which was explained by the
resentment most seasoned conservative political activists felt. Indeed, if
Tea Party activists are often portrayed as newcomers to politics, as an army
that rose to stop Barack Obama’s agenda, in each Tea Party group, there
was also a handful of activists who had already taken part in campaigns—
anti-abortion mobilizations or more traditional presidential campaigns
such as Ronald Reagan’s or George W. Bush’s—or in prior conservative
organizations like the John Birch Society—an anticommunist organiza-
tion created in 1958. Prior to their involvement in the Tea Party, other
activists had run for office themselves—either for school board positions
or for low-level positions in the Republican Party—or organized petition
drives, either to get a candidate on the ballot or to voice their discontent
about a law or a decision. For instance, one activist organized a petition
drive in the 1990 s to protest against the decision to change the name of
a street from “Market Street” to “Martin Luther King Boulevard.” These
political fights played a crucial part in their Tea Party activism because
16 “Senate Primaries to Test Clout of Party Leaders”, CBS News, May 18,
2010: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-primaries-to-test-clout-of-party-leaders/.
Accessed on July 5, 2019.
17 Dick Armey, Matt Kibbe, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, William Morrow,
2010, 272 pp., p. 125.
18 Event created by citizens For Liberty on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.
com/events/472819246217780/. Accessed on June 21, 2019.
208 M. DOUZOU
it provided them with experience that they could pass on to fellow Tea
Party activists and it sometimes meant they had a network they could rely
on. Their activist past also explained the frustration some of them felt
toward elected officials and politics in general. Some had experienced the
disappointment of seeing their candidate lose an election after a vigorous
campaign, especially in the case of Ron Paul, Ross Perot or Barry Gold-
water.19 Others were discouraged as they felt that even when they got
their candidate in, once elected the elected official would abandon their
conservative creed. The George W. Bush presidency was in this respect a
great disappointment to many of the conservative activists that made up
the Pennsylvania Tea Party.20 His reaction to the 2008 economic crisis or
his education law No Child Left Behind were often singled out in inter-
views as straws that broke the camel’s back for many conservatives. These
are examples of federal level politicians, but the same holds true for state
and local elected officials who, according to Tea Party activists, vowed to
work to eliminate the property tax, to reduce the size of government and
not to take money from unions and then went back on these promises.
This feeling of betrayal by politicians was common to all Tea Party
groups in Pennsylvania and led activists to unite against most elected
officials. Michael Kazin defines populism as “a language whose speakers
conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly
by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and
seek to mobilize the former against the latter.”21 He explains that all
the people who employed populism as “a flexible mode of persuasion”
(…) “used traditional kinds of expressions, tropes, themes, and images
to convince large numbers of Americans to join their side or to endorse
their views on particular issues.”22 Therefore, the Tea Party movement
seems to be the latest example in a series of movements and political
parties which have resorted to this language. However, its use of populist
imagery went much further than simply relying on the rhetoric. Indeed, I
19 Ron Paul ran and lost in 2008 in the Republican Party primary. Ross Perot ran as
a third-party candidate and got 19% of the votes in 1992. Barry Goldwater won the
Republican primary in 1964 but went on to lose the presidency.
20 To understand the conservative arguments against George W. Bush, see: Bruce
Bartlett, Impostor, Doubleday, 2006, 320 pp.
21 Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Basic Books, 1995,
286 pp., p. 1.
22 Michael Kazin, op.cit., p. 3.
argue that its organization should be seen as grounded in populist belief.

The Tea Party galaxy was built on the premise that in order to escape
the control of politicians and more broadly of an elite of party insiders,
activists needed to come up with a grassroots and decentralized struc-
ture that had to remain independent. This horizontal organization seems
to be gaining ground in other movements. In the U.S., since the 2016
presidential election, indivisible groups have been fighting the Trump
administration using the Tea Party playbook23 —grassroots groups have
popped up all around the country trying to keep their elected officials
accountable. In France, the Yellow Vests movement which appeared in
the fall of 2018, initially to protest against the creation of a tax on gas
but quickly turned to much broader demands, seems to work in a very
decentralized way as well.
A Common Frame: The Tea Party Nebula

Shortly after its birth, the Tea Party was often portrayed either as a top-
down movement run by the Koch brothers24 or as an unprecedented
grassroots mobilization of conservative activists and mama grizzlies.25
Since then, many scholars, like Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson,
have presented a more complex image of the movement, adding to
the top-down and grassroots branch the influence the media played in
the quick and successful mobilization of Tea Party activists.26 Sociol-
ogists Tina Fetner and Brayden King also attempted to improve the
representation of the movement by describing a three-layer movement:
(The Tea Party) enjoyed a massive infusion of resources from resource-rich

supporters, while also benefitting from a robust grassroots mobilization.
These two represent the top and bottom layers of a movement, while the
23 Osita Nwanevu, “Indivisible, an Early Anti-Trump Group, Plans for a Democratic

Future”, The New Yorker, November 9, 2018: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-
desk/indivisible-an-early-anti-trump-group-plans-for-a-democratic-future. Accessed on July
5, 2019.
24 Paul Street and Anthony Dimaggio, Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the
Campaign to Remake American Politics, Paradigm Publishers, 2011, 288 pp.
25 Michael Graham, That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom: Team Obama’s Assault on
Tea-Party, Talk-Radio Americans, Regnery Publishing, 2010, 259 pp.
26 Theda Skocpol, Vanessa Williamson, op. cit.
210 M. DOUZOU
middle layer includes the organizations and networks that are so important
to mobilization.27
The study of the Pennsylvania Tea Party shows a much more nuanced
landscape. Indeed, this vertical representation of layers does not seem to
do justice to the complexity of the movement. The top layer of resource-
rich supporters does not appear to take into account the wealthy donors
or supporters on the ground that helped grassroots groups and some-
times even ran them.28 The middle layer is also problematic when it
comes to an organization like Heritage Action which was created in 2010
to “combine inside-the-Beltway lobbying with outside-the-Beltway grass-
roots pressure.”29 In Pennsylvania, the state was divided between two
Heritage Action coordinators who attended Tea Party monthly meetings,
spoke at their events, or helped them draft letters to their elected offi-
cials at crucial times. Such a group would be better suited in between the
middle and the bottom layers because of the relationship its coordinators
had with the grassroots. The last issue with such a representation is that it
does not take into account the evolution of the movement and therefore
does not underline the growing autonomy of the grassroots level. Over
the years, top-down organizations such as FreedomWorks or American
Majority lost interest in Pennsylvania which no longer appeared compet-
itive enough and some grassroots groups no longer wanted to work with
federal organizations but continued to be politically active.
I argue that in fact this vertical representation does not account for all
the actors that made up the Tea Party movement. Groups and actors such
27 Tina Fetner, Brayden King, “Three-Layer Movements, Resources and the Tea Party”,
in Nella Van Dyke, David Meyer (eds.), Understanding the Tea Party Movement, Ashgate,
2014, 190 pp., pp. 35–54.
28 The Indiana Armstrong Patriots were run by Tom Smith, a multimillionaire who
came from the coal mining industry.
29 Heritage Action’s mission statement: https://heritageaction.com/about. Accessed on
June 21, 2019.
as think tanks at the federal and state level,30 talk-show hosts,31 conser-
vative universities such as Hillsdale College in Michigan or Grove City
College in Pennsylvania, militia groups, etc., are left out. Based on my
research, I believe the organizational structure of the Tea Party should
not be treated as a minor detail. It echoes the Tea Party rhetoric of trying
to escape the rule of a corrupt elite. A more accurate way of depicting the
Tea Party is to think of it as a galaxy of organizations with different status
and different goals. Some took care of the ideological training of members
when others taught them to be activists. This conservative nebula relied
heavily on grassroots groups which continued to fight despite the disap-
pearance of the Tea Party on the national stage. The grassroots Tea
Party groups kept working in the shadows and applying pressure on their
elected officials, especially at the state and local levels.
Common Aims: Purifying the Republican

Party and the Conservative Movement
As is the case for most social movements, the strategies and tactics Tea
Party activists used were very varied and multi-faceted. However, their
aim was very straightforward: replace the political class they deemed
corrupt, malevolent, and unable to bring about the change they desired.
We will now focus on two of the activities Tea Party activists took part
in outside of their monthly meetings which had significant impact on the
political landscape of the state.
The first is linked to their desire to elect politicians who would work
to reduce the size of government and not get “Potomac fever” once they
got to Washington D.C. To that end, they got involved in campaigns in
all types of races and supported the candidate they deemed most prin-
cipled and conservative. When they failed to find such a candidate, they
tried to vet truly conservative candidates who would be willing to run
30 At the national level, think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation, The CATO
Institute, The Mises Institute provide activists with studies and figures to finetune their
arguments. At the state level, in Pennsylvania, The Commonwealth Foundation provides
the same service.
31 Talk-show hosts are crucial to Tea Party mobilization both at the national and at the
state level. Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levine are just three examples of people who
have a national audience and who have played a decisive role in educating and mobilizing
activists. In Pennsylvania, this role was held by Dom Giordano in Philadelphia and Rose
Tennent and Jim Quinn in Pittsburgh.
212 M. DOUZOU
for office. This strategy has been well-documented at the federal level32
but it is even more present at the state and local levels as races are less
expensive to get in. Indeed, much like past conservative movements such
as the Christian Right,33 Tea Party activists tried to find candidates for
the most local races. When they did not find any, they ran themselves.
This was particularly true for the election of committee people that is the
lowest position within the Republican Party machine. Each precinct has
two committee people (a man and a woman). The job consists mostly in
getting-out the vote and building relationships with the voters in your
precinct. These committee people sit on the county committee and their
chairman sits on the state committee whose chairman also sits on the
Republican National Committee. Being on these committees was espe-
cially important to Tea Party activists because it was where endorsements
were decided.
In Pennsylvania, Tea party members were very critical of the endorse-
ment process which they viewed as undemocratic. The Pennsylvania
Republican Party refused that non-endorsed candidates attend the events
hosted by the state Republican Party, which made it extremely difficult for
any outsider to get elected. Since 2001, in Pennsylvania, 90% of candi-
dates who were endorsed by the Republican State Committee won their
primary while in the Democratic Party, only 48% of the endorsed candi-
dates ended up getting the nomination. Tea Party activists saw it as a way
for the party to control the election and to prevent true conservatives
from running.34 In order to force the GOP to abandon this practice, Tea
Party activists tried to get themselves elected to positions that allowed
them to sit on committees and vote against any endorsement. This tactic
worked well as few people usually ran for these positions to begin with, so
it was very easy to get elected. However, the major hurdle activists faced
with this tactic was that you needed to either get a lot of people to run
32 Charles Bullock (dir.), Key States, High Stakes: Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and the
2010 Elections, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, 254 pp.
33 Melissa Deckman, School Board Battles: The Christian Right and Local Politics,
Georgetown University Press, 2004, 244 pp.; Clyde Wilcox, Onwards Christian Soldiers?:
The Religious Right in American Politics, Westview Press, 2010, 264 pp.
34 Keegan Gibson, “PAGOP to County Chairs: Non-Endorsed Candidates Need Not
Apply”, politicspa.com, February 7, 2012: http://www.politicspa.com/pagop-to-county-
chairs-non-endorsed-candidates-need-not-apply/31676/. Last accessed on June 19, 2019.
simultaneously in different precincts, which was impossible for a decen-

tralized movement like the Tea Party, or you needed to make sure activists
stayed in their positions long enough for them to have a majority, be able
to elect a chairman, and get a seat at the table. To ensure the success of
this long-term strategy, during monthly Tea Party meetings or at conser-
vative gatherings, the Precinct Project35 organized workshops for new
or prospective committee people. They showed activists how they could
have an impact while they waited to be in the majority by getting people
out to vote or by building a network within their communities. In some
areas, this long-term strategy was quite efficient as activists took control of
their county committees and got a seat on the state committee. However,
these successes led the Republican Party to react. In some counties, the
positions of committee people which used to be low-information races
have become increasingly professionalized and expensive.36 This shows
the efficiency of this tactic in some areas.
The second tactic that this article will focus on requires putting intense
pressure on elected officials. To do so, activists built relationships with
their representatives: they knew their way around the Capitol in Harris-
burg really well and often went to their representatives’ local offices. This
grassroots lobbying was sometimes coordinated by conservative organi-
zations like Americans for Prosperity or Heritage Action. Americans for
Prosperity organized Lobby days during which they bused activists to the
Capitol or paid for their mileage. On such days, Americans for Prosperity
coordinators and activists went to talk to the elected officials as a group.
Heritage Action used a less overt approach. They trained what they called
sentinels to lobby their elected officials: they tried to teach them how
to speak without sounding too abrasive and the best techniques to get
through to elected officials. Once they were trained, Heritage Action
provided them with talking points based on research conducted by The
Heritage Foundation so they were able to explain why they wanted their
congressman to vote for or against a particular bill. This way, elected offi-
cials felt grassroots pressure to get them to vote the “right” way. This
more covert way of lobbying was not as discreet as coordinators claimed,
as most of the Republican elected officials I interviewed knew who the
35 http://www.precinctproject.us/. Last accessed on June 21, 2019.

36 Dick Gould, “Chester Purge Orchestrated by Big Money”, billlawrenceon-
line.com, January 4, 2016, http://billlawrenceonline.com/chesco-purge-orchestrated-by-
big-money/. Accessed on June 21, 2019.
214 M. DOUZOU
sentinels were and expressed great frustration toward Heritage Action and
great disappointment about The Heritage Foundation.
These tactics show that Tea Party activists established both short- and
long-term strategies to hold elected officials accountable and to take
power away from the establishment. According to Tea Party activists,
they targeted the “parasitic group” whose inaction allowed the two
other “parasitic groups,” illegal immigrants and welfare recipients, to take
advantage of hardworking Americans. Their support of a politician during
an election was no guarantee of eternal support. Indeed, grassroots and
top-down Tea Party groups tended to push conservative elected officials
toward a harsher and harsher brand of conservatism, away from the estab-
lishment’s position. It was apparent in the fact that very conservative
candidates in 2010 or 2012 were no longer deemed conservative enough
in 2016 or 2018. Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey saw increasing pres-
sure from Tea Party groups after he supported a bill to ban high-capacity
magazines. His grade on the Heritage Action scorecard went from 87%
in 2010 to 59% in 2017.37 During the presidential primary, Marco Rubio
was deemed insufficiently conservative by most Tea Party activists when
he had been elected with their support in 2010. The same held true at
the state level.
The populist anti-establishment stance of Tea Party activists was a great
unifying tool to bring different types of conservatives together but it made
it difficult to support elected officials over a long period of time as they
became themselves part of the new establishment and ended up cutting
deals or wavering from the Tea Party playbook. In 2014, one of the
solutions that some Tea Party groups advocated for was the organization
of a convention of states to ratify amendments to the Constitution that
would impose term limits not only on senators and representatives, but
also on Supreme Court justices.38 In their eyes, this would do away with
unprincipled professional politicians. This strategy echoed the populist
37 Andrew Stiles, “Heritage Action Scores Congress”, The National Review,

August 25, 2011, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/275576/heritage-action-sco
res-congress-andrew-stiles. Accessed on June 21, 2019.
38 This idea was popularized by the talk-show host Mark Levin who wrote a book
outlining what the amendments to the Constitution should be. See Mark Levin, The
Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, Threshold Editions, 2013, 273
pp. This idea has led to many debates within conservative ranks.
rhetoric of the movement as such an amendment would lessen the power

of elected officials.
Conclusion
The Tea Party was not only a populist movement in its rhetoric but also
in its tactics and in its structure. The Tea Party movement was the result
of years of disappointment with Republican governance, especially that
of the George W. Bush’s presidency. Many activists had already tried to
vote for a conservative candidate during the Republican primary, be it
Barry Goldwater or Ron Paul, to support a third-party candidate like Ross
Perot, to take part in a conservative organization such as The John Birch
Society but all of these attempts had failed. The Tea Party movement built
on these past experiences and tried to learn the lessons from these failed
attempts. In the end, they created a movement that is hard to outline
precisely as it was constantly evolving, partnering with new organizations,
while fiercely holding onto its independence.
This desire for independence and the power of the populist language
on the movement were palpable during the 2016 primary election. Penn-
sylvania Tea Party activists were strongly opposed to Jeb Bush or Chris
Christie winning the nomination because they were seen as part of
the establishment. Few of them supported Donald Trump whom they
deemed insufficiently conservative. Most were behind Ted Cruz whose
conservative credentials they considered flawless. On April 1, 2016, at
the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, the state’s conservative confer-
ence, 247 people said they would vote for Ted Cruz and 52 for Donald
Trump. However, after the conference, Donald Trump slowly gained
more ground among Pennsylvania voters. This can partly be explained
by the date of the Pennsylvania primary, which is very late in the electoral
process, which means that, by the time they voted, Trump had already
gained a lot of momentum. However, what convinced them of siding
with this unusual candidate was his outsider status. He was a successful
businessman who was unapologetic and not politically correct. He did not
belong to the establishment, wrought havoc on the party, and twisted the
arms of party insiders. Besides, the rhetoric he used was very close to
that Tea Party activists had been using for years. His “Drain the Swamp”
motto echoed many of the populist slogans or calls to action used by Tea
Party activists over the years. The fact that they supported him and have
216 M. DOUZOU
shown little opposition to him since his election is a testament to how

deep their resentment of the Republican establishment is.
In the 2016 election, populism seemed to have won over the brand of
conservatism Tea Party activists had been advocating for. In the summer
of 2018, I returned to Pennsylvania to interview Tea Party activists who
had been supporters of Senator Ted Cruz. They all explained that even
though ideologically they aligned more with Ted Cruz, he would not have
been a better choice as he would have gotten caught up in Washington’s
political games. One activist summed it up clearly: “I really loved Ted
Cruz but he couldn’t have stood up against this assault. He is a political
animal. Trump is not.” Donald Trump’s appeal to Tea Party activists is
that he is not a politician, which means he does not follow the party line
and he “speaks his mind.”
However, the fact that most Tea Party activists ended up voting for
Donald Trump, that they see his impeachment as a witch hunt, and that
they will most likely be voting for him again in 2020 should in no way
be seen as a sign of an end of the fight for smaller government, as the
battle at the state and local levels continues. The fact that, in June 2018,
the Koch brothers launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to oppose
tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, together with Michigan
Representative and Tea Party favorite Justin Amash’s decision to leave the
Republican Party because it no longer followed the principles he believed
in,39 are two of the many signs of the tensions between the Tea Party’s
conservative populism and Trump’s less ideologically grounded brand of
populism.40
39 Karen Zraick, “Justin Amash, a Trump Critic on the Right, Leaves the G.O.P.”, The
New York Times, July 4, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/us/politics/jus
tin-amash-trump.html. Accessed on July 5, 2019.
40 Brian Schwartz, “Billionaire Koch Brothers’ Political Network Will Spend Millions to
Oppose Trump’s Tariffs—The Group’s Biggest Split with the President so Far”, CNBC,
June 4, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/04/koch-network-plans-to-spend-mil
lions-to-fight-trumps-tariffs.html. Accessed on June 21, 2019.
CHAPTER 11
Religion, a Significant Factor in Donald

Trump’s Populism?
Marie Gayte
The mere fact that Donald Trump was elected president of the United
States on November 8th, 2016 came as a surprise. But voting data
pertaining to a particular constituency compounded the sense of utter
surprise for those who had not been following it closely: the fact that
white religious voters cast their ballot in great numbers for one of the
least religious candidates in recent US history. The Pew Research Center
1 Smith, Gregory, Jessica Martínez, “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016
Analysis”, Pew Research Center 2016, November 9, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/
fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/. This did not
translate to “ethnic” religious voters, regardless of their degree of religiosity, as evidence
shows (). Strongly religious African American and Latino voters favor the Democratic
Party, in a clear case of ethnicity/race trumping religion as a predictor of vote. In the
particular case of the 2016 election, the rhetoric used by Donald Trump did not help the
chances of the Republican Party with ethnic voters, irrespective of the intensity of their
religious practice.
M. Gayte (B)
University of Toulon, La Garde, France
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_11
218 M. GAYTE
found that 81% of white evangelicals, 61% of white Catholics, and of 61%
Mormons had voted for the real estate mogul. In addition, the more reli-
gious the voters were, the more they voted for Trump,1 which adds to the
sense of astonishment, given the disconnect between Trump’s personality
and agenda and the worldviews of these voters and the teachings they
profess to follow so closely. Trump kicked off his primary campaign by
calling illegal Mexican immigrants rapists and thieves, and by promising
to build a wall on the US/Mexico border, whose bill he would send
to the Mexican government. While this may have appealed to some
voters, Catholics should in theory have been put off by such rhetoric:
even when leaving aside the Catholic Church’s rejection of putting such
labels on immigrants in such a way, its social doctrine has been consistent
about their defense. Evangelical Christianity looks askance at gambling
and adultery, which does not sit well with the twice-divorced former
casino boss. Despite his rather irreligious profile, candidate Trump put
forward an agenda that pleased some religious voters, promising them,
among other things, Supreme Court and other federal court appointees
with solid prolife credentials. Contrary to Western Europe, where many
right-wing populist parties operate, the United States remains a highly
religious society. Trump was therefore able to attract “value voters” by
making promises on issues such as abortion that resonated with some of
the teachings of religious voters’ churches.
Yet the key to his success with religious voters seems to lie beyond this
simple explanation: the use by Donald Trump of religion in the context of
his populist discourse. The aim of this paper is to draw from recent schol-
arship on religion and populism in Europe to analyze Trump’s success
with white religious voters. This paper will try to show that although
Trump’s brand of religious populism shares many of the characteristics of
its European counterparts, a number of US specificities, namely the high
degree of religiosity of Americans by European standards, and the still
influential role of religion in US politics, result in some departures from
the observations made on “religious populism” in Europe.
11 RELIGION, A SIGNIFICANT FACTOR IN DONALD TRUMP’S POPULISM? 219
Religion and Populism: An Understudied

Field that Is Drawing Growing Interest
In 2015, Cas Mudde reflected on the dearth of academic work on the
religious dimension of populism.2 Since then, a volume edited by Olivier
Roy, Nadia Marzouki, and Duncan McDonnell published in 2016 has
tried to fill the gap in scholarship,3 as well as an article by Jose Pedro
Zuquete published in the Oxford Handbook of Populism,4 not to mention
the work of Tobias Cremer.5 In their insightful introduction, Marzouki
and McDonnell note that the most important new populist parties in
recent decades have been of the right-wing persuasion. They go beyond
Mudde in identifying the key players of the populist dynamic and add
to the two homogeneous and antagonistic groups—the “pure people”
versus “the corrupt elite”—a third group, “the other,” usually Muslim
immigrants in western states, who it is impossible to ever include among
the people, when they are not suspected of stealth Islamisation of their
host country. In this dynamic, the horizontal dimension, that of the “the
people” versus “the other,” immigrants and/or Muslims, threatens the
virtues and the well-being of the nation, if not its very identity. As to
the vertical dimension, the “corrupt elite,” it is accused of encouraging
“the other” to undermine the nation’s identity and values by making it
easier for them to enter and then providing them with benefits that “the
people” is often deprived of.6
In addition, Marzouki et al. argue that right-wing populism use of reli-
gion has more to do with belonging than belief and serves as a tool to
2 Cas Mudde, “Conclusion: Some Further Thoughts on Populism”, in Carlos de la

Torre (ed.), The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives. Lexington:University
Press of Kentucky, 2015, pp. 431–451.
3 Nadia Marzouki, Duncan McDonnell, Olivier Roy, Saving the People: How Populists
Hijack Religion, London: Hurst, 2016.
4 Jose Pedro Zúquete, “Populism and Religion”, in Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul
Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Pierre Ostiguy (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism,
Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 445–466.
5 Tobias Cremer, “Defenders of the Faith: Why Right-Wing Populists are Embracing
Religion”, The New Statesman, May 30, 2018, https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/
05/defenders-faith-0.
6 Rogers Brubaker, “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism: The European Populist
Movement in Comparative Perspective”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40:8, 2017, pp. 1191–
1226.
220 M. GAYTE
define the identity and the culture of “the people” against the intruders
and their elite facilitators. Zuquete agrees and sees Christianity, or rather
“Christendom,” used essentially as a marker of identity and not necessarily
as a matter of faith or of religious observance.7 Olivier Roy demonstrates
in his work on the religious dynamics of then French National Front how
the party instrumentalized Christianity in its politics to build nostalgia for
a golden national past and render Islam an intrinsically foreign culture.8
For Roy, populist movements that employ Christianity are “Christian
largely to the extent that they reject Islam.” For Brubaker also, populist
movements in north Atlantic societies share a kind of “civilizationism” in
which they cast Islam as a threat to their civilizational integrity.9 Taken
together, these insights point to a role of religion in populism that is
almost entirely identitarian and negative, with politicians using it to evoke
a reinvented Christian past, which bears echo of Paul Taggart’s heart-
land—an idealized reconstructed past10 —to warn about the existential
threat of invading Muslims and of the need to expel these Muslims from
the nation’s future to guarantee its survival.11 For Marzouki et al., this
involves the twin notions of restoration and battle. Restoration involves
the return of a particular native religious identity or set of traditions and
symbols, rather than a theological doctrine with rules and precepts. To
restore these lost or threatened symbols, “the people” has to battle the
two groups of enemies that are the “corrupt elite,” who disregard the
importance of the people’s religious heritage, and “the others,” who seek
to impose their religious values and laws upon the native population.12
7 Zuquete, op. cit.

8 Olivier Roy, “The French National Front: From Christian Identity to Laicité”, in N.
Marzouki, D. McDonnell, O. Roy (eds.), Saving the People: How Populists Hijack Religion,
London: Hurst, 2016, pp. 79–93.
9 Brubaker, op. cit.
10 Paul Taggart, “Populism Has the Potential to Damage European Democracy, but
Demonising Populist Parties Is Self-defeating”, LSE Blog, December 2012, http://
eprints.lse.ac.uk/49452/1/__Libfile_repository_Content_LSE%20EUROPP_2012_Dece
mber%202012_Week%203_blogs.lse.ac.uk-Populism_has_the_potential_to_damage_Eur
opean_democracy_but_demonising_populist_parties_is_selfdefeat.pdfP.
11 Daniel Nilsson DeHanas, Marat Shterin, “Religion and the Rise of Populism”,
Religion, State and Society, 46:3, 2018, pp. 177–185.
12 Nadia Marzoukid, Duncan McDonnell, “Introduction: Populism and Religion”, in
Nadia Marzouki, Duncan McDonnell, Olivier Roy (eds.), Saving the People: How Populists
Hijack Religion, London: Hurst, 2016, pp. 1–12.
Evidence that religion does not contribute in any substantial way

in shaping the agenda of these parties, but is just an empty signifier,
according to Marzouki et al. and Zuquete, is that these right-wing
populists who brandish the defense of their country’s Christian identity
often clash publicly with religious leaders, who accuse them of distorting
the faith to gain political advantage.13 At a February rally in Milan during
the 2018 general election campaign, Lega Nord federal secretary Mateo
Salvini brandished a crucifix and a Bible. This drew a sharp rebuke from
the city’s archbishop, Mario Delpini, who suggested he stick to politics.14
The party and the leadership of the Catholic Church in Italy have espe-
cially sparred over the treatment of migrants, which the Church’s social
doctrine specifically says should be welcomed and supported by believers.
To continue taking the example of the Catholic Church, which remains a
fairly strong voice in countries having strong right-wing populist parties
(Italy, Austria, Germany) or who retains a historical and cultural pres-
ence (France), disagreements also occur on several issues other than
immigration. While long opposed to LGBT rights, when not outright
homophobic, most right-wing populist parties now embrace these rights,
or are reluctant to come out publicly against them, were it only to
denounce Muslim intolerance of them.
This rejection of right-wing populist parties by major European
denominations goes hand in hand with a lack of support from religious
voters. As a matter of fact, “polls show that supporters of these parties are
actually disproportionately irreligious, and that church attendance is one
of the strongest statistical predictors for voting against the populist radical
right.”15 Cremer and other scholars attribute this to the mainstream
churches’ outspokenness in their condemnation of these movements, and
the fact than in several European countries, such as Germany, they still
have the social capital to influence the electorate and have been able to
“erect a powerful social taboo around voting” for parties such as the AfD.
13 Luca Ozzano, “Populisme, partis politiques et religions en Europe: une perspective

internationaliste et comparative”, keynote address delivered at the symposium religious
actors and their role in the international scene, Sciences Po Paris, December 3, 2018.
14 Hannah Roberts, “Matteo Salvini’s Catholic Problem”, Politico, December 25,
2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/matteo-salvini-italy-don-antonio-rizzolo-catholic-
establishment-sides-with-humanity-over-salvini/.
15 Cremer, op. cit.
222 M. GAYTE
He also points to the loyalty of Christian voters to certain parties, espe-

cially Christian Democratic ones, which makes these voters unavailable to
the more recent right-wing populist ones.
Other researchers have identified another dimension in which religion
and populism intertwine: that of the sacralization of politics. For Jose
Pedro Zuquete and Paul Taggart,16 in populist politics, the country, the
people, the leader, and the cause they stand for take on a quasi reli-
gious dimension. Taggart thus identifies four quasi religious features of
populism: (1) the fact that people say that populism relies on a charismatic
leader. (2) the idea that the people are presented as virtuous and blessed,
and that simply being dutiful and getting on with things is enough for
them to qualify for this. (3) a strong emphasis on evangelical teaching,
something which was already observed at the time of the People’s Party
in the late nineteenth century United States (this movement, strongly
influenced by evangelical Christianity, focused on teaching its members
how to work cooperatively against the chokehold exerted by banks, the
railroad…). (4) a Manichean vision of the world, with a division between
good and evil.
The United States in 2016: A Textbook Case

of a Country Amenable to “Religious Populism?”
When trying to understand Donald Trump’s success with white religious
voters, Marzouki, Zuquete, Taggart, and Brubaker’s observations may be
of help. Beyond the promises on issues aimed at conservative religious
voters made by the Republican candidate, it appears Trump may have
tapped into a sense among white Christians that they were fast becoming
a minority in the country their ancestors had founded and that white
Christian America, which they considered to be the authentic country,
the “heartland” in Paul Taggart’s words, was on the verge of defunc-
tion. This sentiment appears to be corroborated by a number of elements.
First, data collected by the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion
Research Institute published shortly before the 2016 election indicate a
sense of alienation and threat. That the threat to white Christian America
16 Paul Taggart, “Populism and Unpolitics: Core Features and Tropes in Contemporary
Populism in Europe and the United States,” keynote address delivered at the symposium
the faces of contemporary populism in Western Europe and the United States, Toulon
University, June 14, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqgTwT2NCsQ.
comes, from one hand, from “the other,” is borne out by polls which
show that white Catholics and evangelicals consider Islam to be funda-
mentally at odds with American values and way of life. This belief is held
by 56% of Americans, but the figure reaches 73% for white evangelical
Protestants and 61% for Catholics.17 This acute sense of incompatibility
does not stem from the presence of large number of Muslims on US soil;
even though their numbers have increased by 0.5 points from 2007 to
2014, they account for just 0.9% of the US population.18 The rejection
of Islam may not necessarily have to do with actual numbers of Muslims
living in the US, as it appears that anti-Muslim feelings increased in the
wake of the 9–11 terror attacks. This sense of threat from an “alien”
religion goes hand in hand with a growing sense among conservative
religious voters that they are more and more treated like second-class
citizens in their own country, not unlike historical minority groups, and
that discrimination against them has become as big a problem as against
other groups. Whereas 49% of Americans overall hold that belief, 57%
of white evangelicals feel there is more discrimination against Christians
than Muslims.19
This sense of growing persecution has to be analyzed in the context
of the Obama presidency, the incarnation of this elite that disregards
the “real people’s” will, to push a socially liberal agenda and cater
exclusively to the needs of “the other,” i.e., Muslim—and other—immi-
grants. Obama, the son of a Kenyan Muslim brought up by an agnostic
single mother, had a sort of religious epiphany and went out of his
way throughout the 2008 presidential campaign to tout his Christian
faith. He also went out of his way to show concern for the signature
issues of the religious right; he insisted for instance on the need to
treat abortion as a moral matter and to aim at reducing it through the
promotion of adoption and of legislation making it easier for a mother
17 “Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust. Findings from the 2015 American Values
Survey”, PRRI, July 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/
PRRI-2015-American-Values-Survey-V9-short.pdf2015.
18 “America’s Changing Religious Landscape”, Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015,
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
19 Emma Green, “White Evangelicals Believe They Face More Discrimination Than
Muslims”, The Atlantic, March 20, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/
2017/03/perceptions-discrimination-muslims-christians/519135/.
224 M. GAYTE
to keep her child. He also declared himself personally opposed to same-

sex marriage. This did not prevent a number of people from circulating
rumors that he was a Muslim, or, like Donald Trump, that he was not
American. But some of the measures adopted throughout his presidency
lent credence to the idea that Obama was part of this rabidly secular
elite that scorns “the people’s” belief. At the same time, shifts in public
opinion tended to indicate that the values of white religious Americans
were fast becoming minority values. 2010 was the year in which all surveys
concurred on a shift in public opinion on gay marriage, with for the first
time a majority of Americans supporting its legalization.20 This signifi-
cant development spurred policy changes that seemed hitherto quite easy
to resist for conservative religious groups, as evidenced by the 2008 Reli-
gious Right’s successful “Proposition 8” campaign in California to make
same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Since then, decisions in favor of gay
rights accumulated. In 2010, the rule allowing gays to serve in the mili-
tary provided they kept their sexual orientation to themselves—known as
“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”—was repealed. The Obama Administration then
decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which had been
passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses of Congress
in 1996. This act defined marriage as the union of one man and one
woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages
contracted in another state. The Obama Administration decision resulted
in the 2013 US v. Windsor Supreme Court ruling, which canceled the
section of the act stipulating that marriage was the union of one man and
one woman. As a matter of fact, in 2012 Barack Obama had come out in
support of same-sex marriage. The culmination of this sequence was the
recognition of the legality of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court
with the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. In this context of growing
acceptance of gay rights, religious foster care and adoption agencies who
rejected applications by same-sex couples started losing federal funding,
something which they interpreted as religious discrimination.
Similarly, Obama’s signature reform, the Affordable Care Act,
contributed to a sense among conservative white Christians that their
beliefs were not taken into consideration by the Obama administration.
The fact that companies with over 50 employees had to provide contra-
ception as part of the health-care package offered to their workers—the
20 “Attitudes on Gay Marriage”, Pew Research Center, May 14, 2019, https://www.
pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/.
contraception mandate—even if it clashed with their religious beliefs, with

only churches exempt from the mandate, led to a barrage of opposition
from religious groups. Chief among them were the United States Catholic
Conference of Bishops (USCCB) and many evangelical groups, which
claimed that the religious freedom of Americans was under severe threat.
Invoking the First Amendment to the Constitution and its defense of
religious freedom clause, the USCCB organized a number of events and
committees to fight federal and state attacks on Americans’ “first, most
cherished liberty.”
While religious groups were up in arms against President Obama’s
and the Supreme Court landmark decisions on health care and same-sex
marriage, the fact that all three branches of government made deci-
sions that contradicted their core beliefs also fueled a sense of alienation
from government among white religious Americans. Between 2009 and
2014, the share of Americans who considered the Obama Administration
unfriendly toward religion rose from 17 to 29%, with the figure rising
from 38 to 57% for white evangelicals and from 15 to 28% for white
Catholics.21 In the final two years of the Obama Administration, the
percentage of white evangelicals who considered it was becoming harder
to be evangelical in the United States rose by 4 points, from the already
high 42 to 46%, but interestingly enough, the most significant rise was
among non white evangelicals, with a 9 point increase, from 22 to 31%,22
a feeling that could be tapped by a future populist candidate who would
not go out his way to alienate African American or Latino voters the way
Donald Trump did in 2015–2016.
White Christians in the United States feel they are being discriminated
against like minorities of old, their beliefs are now only held by a minority
of the population and are in addition “scorned” by a secular elite, which
they feel treats them like second-class citizens, and this sense of losing
their place in the country they consider theirs is probably compounded
by their actual demographic decline. According to the latest Pew Research
Center survey on the US religious landscape published in 2015, the share
21 Michael Lipka, “5 Takeaways About Religion and Politics Before the Midterms”, Pew
Research Center, September 22, 2014, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/
09/22/5-takeaways-about-religion-and-politics-before-the-midterms/.
22 Michael Lipka, “Evangelicals Increasingly Say It’s Becoming Harder for Them in
America”, Pew Research Center, July 14, 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/
2016/07/14/evangelicals-increasingly-say-its-becoming-harder-for-them-in-america/.
226 M. GAYTE
of Christians in the US population went down from 78.4 to 70.6% from

2007 to 2014. Evangelical Protestants, even though they do not suffer
the most from this precipitous decline, saw their share go down from 26.3
to 25.4% over the same period. Catholics on the other hand experienced
a drop from 23.9 to 20.8%. By contrast, non-Christian faiths experi-
enced a 1.2 point increase, from 4.7 to 5.9%.23 The most momentous
development however was the unprecedented increase in the proportion
of “nones,” those Americans who claim no religious affiliation or who
call themselves agnostic or atheist; they underwent an unprecedented
rise, going from 16.1 to 22.8%. Further, those who form this growing
“unaffiliated” category are growing more secular and less likely to be
religious. 70% of “nones” believed in God or a universal spirit in 2007,
but this figure had dropped to 60% by 2014. Similarly, the percentage
of “nones” who said religion played a somewhat/very important part
in their life declined from 41 to 34% over the same time-period (Pew
Research Center 2015). In addition, prospects for the future look even
gloomier. A 2014 PRRI survey indicated that white Christians’ share of
the population is bound to drop further. While they accounted in 2014
for 67% of Americans 65 and older, they only represented 29% of the 18–
29 age group. Likewise, the share of religiously unaffiliated represented
just 11% of Americans 65 and plus, but it tripled to 34% for those aged
18–29 (PRRI 2014). Likewise, the share of whites among Catholics has
been undergoing a steep decline. The PRRI found that while in 1991,
87% of US Catholics were white, they are just now 55%, while 36% are
Hispanic (PRRI 2018).
Donald Trump’s Effective Use

of Religious Identity Rhetoric
We find the United States in 2016 in a situation in which religion can
become an instrument of right-wing populist political parties or candi-
dates.24 It was in those very circumstances that Donald Trump was able
23 “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” May 12, 2015, http://www.pewforum.

org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
24 Resort to religion by populist groups is nothing new in the United States. On
top of the People’s Party episode of the 1890s, the Tea Party movement which rose to
prominence with its electoral success in the 2010 midterm elections, although primarily an
anti-tax and anti-government movement, also featured the defense of America’s threatened
to woo white Christian voters, not only by promising to make some

of their most ardent wishes come true, but also by appealing to their
sense of growing marginalization. A look at his campaign speeches shows
first of all that he targeted “the other,” i.e., Muslim immigrants, with
white Christian audiences. At the Faith and Freedom Coalition Summit,
a Christian lobbying group founded by Christian Coalition’s former exec-
utive director Ralph Reed, Trump declared: “[w]e have to temporarily
stop this whole thing with what’s going on with refugees where we don’t
know where they come from […],” while calling for “new immigration
controls “to keep us safe from radical Islamic terrorism.”25 At the Values
Voters Summit, an annual conference hosted by the evangelical Family
Research Council, he criticized Barack Obama for having let “Syrian
refugees pour into our country at unbelievable rates,” and accused his
rival Hillary Clinton of wanting “to allow 550 percent more.” He also
highlighted that it is “almost impossible to get a Christian in from Syria.
They take others, but they don’t take Christians – very, very, very rare.”26
The Syrian crisis comes here as an opportunity to stigmatize “the other,”
the Muslim refugee, while accusing the elite in power—Democrats—of
favoring Muslims, who are alien to US culture, to the detriment of Syrian
Christians whose assimilation into US society would be much easier. Part
of the blame for the state of affairs is also to be laid at the feet of the
media, a favorite Trump foe. In June 2016 he singled out “[o]ur media
culture [which] often mocks and demeans people of faith. […] All the
time I hear from concerned parents how much harder it is for a Christian
family to raise their children in today’s media environment”27
Christian identity against the threat coming from Islam among its frequently recurring
themes (Marzouki 2016). A major party figure, former Alaska governor and vice pres-
idential candidate, Sarah Palin, was one of the key spokespersons for this aspect of the
movement, which was associated with a strong rise in the number of controversies around
the construction of mosques, for instance, and the development of “anti-Sharia” initiatives
in several states (Marzouki 2016).
25 Donald Trump, “Remarks at Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference”, C-SPAN ,
June 10, 2016, https://www.c-span.org/video/?410912-4/donald-trump-addresses-faith-
freedom-coalition-conference.
26 Donald Trump, “Trump Values Voters Summit Remarks”, Politico, September
9, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/full-text-trump-values-voter-summit-
remarks-227977.
27 Trump, June 2016, op. cit.
228 M. GAYTE
Throughout the campaign, he also resorted to the restoration and

battle metaphors highlighted by Marzouki et al. At Christian Dordt
College in Iowa in January 2016, Donald Trump declared that “Chris-
tianity is under tremendous siege” and that Christians are getting “less
and less and less powerful in terms of a religion, and in terms of a force.”
He talked about uniting the Christian people to exert the power they
should have based on their numbers, because “there is nothing the politi-
cians can do to you if you band together.” He promised to give them
their power back, saying “if I get elected president, […] Christianity
will have power […]. Because if I’m there, you’re going to have plenty
of power. You don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have some-
body representing you very, very well. Remember that.”28 At the Values
Voter Summit, he said that with “[a] Trump administration, our Chris-
tian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended, like you’ve never
seen before.”29 At the Freedom and Faith summit, he also said “[w]e will
restore respect for people of faith who dutifully raise their children, follow
our laws and rules, and we have to really take care of them. […]. We will
restore faith to its proper mantle in society. That’s what we have to do and
we have to do it soon. We will respect and defend Christian Americans.
Christian Americans.”30 His restoration rhetoric hinged specifically on an
alleged “war on Christmas,” which brings up echoes of similar attempts
by European populist parties, such as those of the Italian Lega to bring
back crucifixes in the classroom. Given the growing secular culture of
the country, saying “Merry Christmas” was now supposedly considered
as non politically correct, which constrained people to use the noncom-
mittal “Happy Holidays” instead. Trump devoted a significant amount of
time to that issue in his campaign, declaring for instance at the September
2015 Values Voters Summit that “[o]ther people can have their holidays
but Christmas is Christmas. I want to see Merry Christmas. Remember
the expression Merry Christmas? You don’t see it anymore! You’re going
to see it if I get elected, I can tell you right now.” 31 In doing so, Donald
28 Donald Trump, “Campaign Speech at Dordt College”, The 405 Media, January 23,
2016, http://the405media.com/2016/01/23/donald-trump-sioux-center-ia-123/.
29 Trump, September 2016, op. cit.
31 Donald Trump, “Trump Values Voters Summit Remarks”, C-SPAN , September
25, 2015, https://www.c-span.org/video/?328352-13/2015-values-voter-summit-don
ald-trump.
Trump taps into a fantasy among many evangelical Americans, that the
US was founded as a Christian nation, by Christians, and that the country
must recover its Christian values.32
Events in the campaign came to reinforce this sense that white Chris-
tians were being mocked, with the “Catholic spring” leak of Democratic
emails, which fueled a number of conspiracy theories around secular elites’
scorn for and attempts to subvert Christianity, conspiracy theories being,
according to Paul Taggart one of populism’s secondary features.33 In
October 2016, just a few weeks before Election Day, a number of 2011
emails sent to or written by John Podesta, who had since then become
Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, were leaked and found their way in
the press. In an April 2011 mail sent by a think tank researcher to Podesta,
the analyst poked fun at the fact that some famous conservatives, such
as Rupert Murdoch, had their children baptized in the Catholic faith,
and that many powerful conservatives were now converts to Catholicism,
which he called an “amazing bastardization of the faith.” The analyst pins
this on their attraction “to the systematic thought and severely backwards
gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
To this, Jennifer Palmieri, who was Clinton’s communication director,
answered that all these powerful conservatives chose Catholicism because
it was “the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,”
and “[t]heir rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangeli-
cals.”34 But the true fodder of conspiracy theories, beyond the mockery
of the aforementioned emails, is Podesta’s response to a 2012 email.
In it, the president of a progressive NGO suggested that the Demo-
cratic Party should seize the opportunity afforded by the tension between
Catholic bishops, who in the name of their opposition to contraception
were battling the Affordable Care Act, and ordinary Catholics, who over-
whelmingly support contraception, to foster a “Catholic spring, in which
Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and
the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in
the Catholic Church.” Podesta responded that “[w]e created Catholics in
Alliance for the Common Good [two progressive Catholic organizations]
32 John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction,

Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
33 Taggart, June 2018, op. cit.
34 Wikileaks, The Podesta Email, “Re: Conservative Catholicism”, April 11, 2011,
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/4364.
230 M. GAYTE
to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to
do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most spring movements, I
think this one will have to be bottom up”.35
Suspicions of an anti-Christian conspiracy on the part of secular
Democrats were further fueled by the leaking of other emails which
revealed that George Soros’s foundation had financed “pseudo-religious
organizations” ahead of Pope Francis’s September 2015 visit to the
United States, with a view to “shift[ing] national paradigms and prior-
ities in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign,” namely to get the
Pope to modify his rhetoric so that it matches more that of the Demo-
cratic Party than that of the GOP. Heads of these organizations were
later happy to report to Soros’s foundation that they had been able to
convince several individual bishops to be more outspoken in their support
for social and economic justice issues—something seen as congruent with
the Democratic agenda, unlike opposition to abortion and contracep-
tion, which are seen as “Republican issues”—to the point of having a
critical mass of bishops aligned with the Pope’s message. The organiza-
tions funded by Soros also reported having conducted efforts to shift “the
priorities of the U.S. Catholic Church to focus on issues of injustice and
oppression.” Reflecting on the success of the grant to influence the papal
visit, the Soros foundation was, according to the leaked report, “very
pleased with the results. Looking to the future, they are excited that the
long-term goal of shifting the priorities of the Catholic Bishops in the
United States is now underway.”36
Research has found that the use by Trump of a religious brand of
populism, among many others, has had a distinctive echo with a certain
category of voters, that are usually referred to as Christian nationalists,
with Christian nationalism being defined as a pervasive set of beliefs that
merge American and Christian groups memberships—along with their
history and futures and that these Christian nationalists had a unique
35 Wikileaks, The Podesta Email, “Re: Opening for a Catholic Spring? Just Musing”,
February 10–11, 2012, https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/57579.
36 Soros Open Society Foundation Leaks, “Open Society US Programs Board Meet-
ings”, May 7–8, 2015, https://s3.amazonaws.com/lifesite/-usp_may_2015_board_book.
pdf; “Review of 2015 U.S. Opportunities Fund to: USP Advisory Board from: Andrea
Batista Schlesinger and Nathan McKee”, February 9, 2016, https://s3.amazonaws.com/
lifesite/opportunities-fund-memo.pdf.
and independent influence leading to Trump’s election.37 Voting for

Trump was seen by many voters as a defense of America’s supposed Chris-
tian heritage. Trump’s rhetoric of religious restoration and battle, along
with his singling out of the Muslim “other,” found an echo in what
Philip Gorski has described as the contemporary manifestations of Chris-
tian nationalism, characterized by its unmooring from traditional moral
import, emphasizing only its notion of exclusion and apocalyptic war and
conquest.38
One final aspect in the study of the religious dimension of populism
pertains to Zuquete and Taggart’s comments on the quasi religious nature
of populism. Once again, Trump’s resort to religious populism seems to
fit the bill. Christian people as he presents them are seen as virtuous; they
“dutifully raise their children, follow our laws and rules.”39 When turning
to the presence of a charismatic leader at the helm of the movement,
Taggart reminds us that the much-hackneyed word “charisma” actually
means according to Max Weber someone who was chosen by God. Trump
is seen by millions of evangelical Christians as anointed by God and many
consider God himself made him president.40 The cause for which Trump
is fighting is also holy, since he has said many times that he wants to
“restore faith to its proper mantle in society.”41
Religious Populism and American

Religious “Exceptionalism”
There are, however, at least three aspects where Trump’s religious
populism departs from observations made about its European coun-
terparts: that of the relationship between religious denominations and
populist candidates and parties, and that of the religious content of the
37 Andrew Whitehead, Samuel Perry, Joseph Baker, “Make America Christian Again:
Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election”,
Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review èç (2), 2018, p. 148.
38 Philip Gorski, “Why Do Evangelicals vote for Trump”, The Immanent
Frame, October 4, 2016, https://tif.ssrc.org/2016/10/04/why-do-evangelicals-vote-for-
trump/. See also, by the same author, “Why Evangelicals Voted for Trump: A Critical
Cultural Sociology”, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5, 2017, pp. 338–354.
40 Stephen Strang, God and Donald Trump, Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2017.
41 Trump, June 2016, op.cit.
232 M. GAYTE
programs of populist parties who use religious tropes. Marzouki et al.

write of the many brush-offs populist European leaders have had with the
religious leaders whose very traditions they borrow from. In the United
States, there have been clashes between certain political leaders and the
Catholic Church. While Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s vice president, was
still governor of Indiana, he got into a quarrel with the leading arch-
bishop of his state over welcoming Muslim Syrian refugees in the state.42
During the campaign, Trump is infamous for having clashed with Pope
Francis. Asked about what he thought about building a wall to keep
Mexican migrants out of the country, his answer was that anyone creating
walls instead of building bridges was not a Christian.43 Since Trump’s
election, the USCCB has put out statements denouncing various Trump
Administration policies, such as the “Muslim ban” or his tax cut. Yet,
not all denominations have denounced Trump policies, and many have
shown how pleased they were. As a matter of fact, Trump has surrounded
himself with a Faith Advisory Board, a holdover from the campaign. This
informal body, made up exclusively of evangelical Protestant leaders —
among whom key figures such as Jerry Falwell Jr, James Dobson, Richard
Land, or Robert Jeffress—enjoys unprecedented access to the President
and has weighed fairly heavily on policymaking, with some crediting it
for the decision to transfer the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Photos are frequently shown of Trump praying—and being prayed over—
by members of this council, and so far only a handful of pastors have
left the board in protest over Trump’s policies and declarations. As a
matter of fact, the sense of marginalization and even persecution felt by
many white Christians in America has been fueled by religious leaders
themselves, including by Catholics who clash with Trump on issues of
immigration and social justice. The growing number of white Catholics
and evangelicals who considered discrimination against them to be on
42 Katie Zezima, “Mike Pence Wants to Keep Syrian Refugees Out of Indiana. They’re
Coming Anyway”, Washington Post, August 28, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/politics/mike-pence-wants-to-keep-syrian-refugees-out-of-indiana-theyre-coming-any
way/2016/08/28/2847f4dc-6576-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html?utm_term=.
d38146cd8aee.
43 Jenna Johnson, Jose A. DelReal, J. Freedom du Lac, “Pope: Donald Trump ‘Is Not
Christian’ If He Wants to Build a Border Wall”, Washington Post, February 18, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/18/pope-trump-is-
not-christian-if-he-wants-to-build-a-wall-on-the-u-s-mexico-border/?utm_term=.5512e1
f24e2b.
the rise and of those who saw the Obama Administration as hostile to
religion is to be put in the context of concerted campaigns on the part
of Catholic, evangelical, and Mormon leaders to mobilize the faithful
against the forced secularization allegedly imposed by elites. As part of
the USCCB’s defense of the First Amendment campaign, one of its most
famous figures, New York’s archbishop Timothy Dolan, at the time pres-
ident of the Conference, issued a September 30, 2012, press release
asserting that religious liberty is “increasingly and in unprecedented
ways under assault in America thanks to the Obama administration.”44
The evangelical Concerned Women for America listed among its “con-
cerns” about religious liberty “[t]he trend of government to diminish
and disregard the God-given inalienable rights of individuals, the erosion
of religious liberty and the legal and cultural imposition of anti-Judeo-
Christian philosophies upon our society.” Focus on the Family’s website
features a number of publications and articles with titles such as “Perse-
cuting Believers Does not Protect Anyone’s Civil Rights,” “Can Churches
and Pastors Be Forced to Perform Same-Sex Marriages?” or “Hostility to
Religion: The Growing Threat to Religious Liberty in the United States.”
Various evangelical groups began tracking “religious liberty violations”
and “defamation” of those Christians who stand for marriage and other
important issues, and reporting on them. Even before Trump’s emer-
gence on the political stage, conservative religious leaders attended and
spoke at Tea Party events about the “religion identity of the nation.”45
These movements have also called on Christians to mobilize and fight
back against these attacks: thus, the “Manhattan Declaration,” published
with great fanfare in 2009,46 urged its signers to engage in “civil disobe-
dience” against “unjust laws,” such as those “forcing religious people to
44 Rob Boston, “The Bishops, Obama and Religious Freedom”, Church & State Maga-
zine, February 2012, https://www.au.org/church-state/february-2012-church-state/fea
tured/the-bishops-obama-and-religious-freedom.
45 Marzouki et al., op. cit.
46 It was drafted by evangelical leader Chuck Colson, Catholic academic and activist
Robert George, and Timothy George, dean of a Southern Baptist divinity school, and
signed by hundreds of prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders and later by “ordinary”
Christians.
234 M. GAYTE
recognize same-sex union as marriage” or “forcing them to take part in

abortion or euthanasia.”47
This may explain another major discrepancy between the American and
European brands of religious populism: the fact that unlike their Euro-
pean counterparts, a majority of white Christian American voters have
cast their ballot for the populist candidate. Cremer has noted that in
countries where churches have been less outspoken against the right-wing
populists’ agenda than in Germany or Italy—he mentions as examples the
US or Poland —or in regions where the churches are institutionally less
powerful, there has been less of a negative correlation between going to
church and voting for right-wing populists.48 Although some churches
have been outspoken in the United States, such as the Catholic Church,
it has not been the case for all, as we have seen, and even the Catholic hier-
archy shares a lot of common ground with the Trump agenda. Another
major difference between Europe and the United States is the degree of
religiosity of their populations. While 24% of Germans attend a religious
service at least once a month, the figure reaches 69% in the US. With
62.2 million evangelical Protestants,49 of which very few have leaders who
confront Trump’s policies, and many who, on the contrary, hear support
for them in the pews as well as a rhetoric of persecution and defamation
of Christians in the country, there is a vast resource of voters for a leader
using religion in his personal brand of populism.
This brings us to the final disconnect between Europe and the United
States when it comes to religious populism. Marzouki, Brubaker, and
others have all pointed to the fact that the religion referred to by right-
wing populist parties is only an empty signifier used to characterize an
identity facing a dual threat that coming from a secular elite and that
from “the other.” In the United States however, religion does more
than provide populist political parties with useful rhetorical devices. They
weigh to certain degree on the party’s agenda. Joe Creech argues that in
the populist movement of late nineteenth century, which saw a confluence
of evangelicals and an agrarian movement, religion had several forms of
influence. Not only did the Protestant evangelical faith of some movement
47 “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience”, November 20, 2009,

https://www.manhattandeclaration.org/.
48 Cremer, op. cit.
49 “America’s Changing Religious Landscape”, Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015,
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
members led them to present their political struggle for reform in biblical
terms, casting themselves as crusaders against trusts, banks, and the rail-
road. Creech also argues that their faith weighed heavily when it came
to defining the movement’s philosophy and method: for instance, the
independent nature of their denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Disciples
of Christ) led them to embrace private property and to organize them-
selves independently of labor and socialist organizations and to claim their
influence from the oppression of trust, bank, and railroad. Churches also
served as meeting halls for movement participants, and parish bulletins
relayed the movement’s concerns and actions.50 Trump’s program, while
not shaped by religious concerns, quite obviously sought to address the
concerns of religious Americans.
Donald Trump’s brand of religious populism, while corresponding to
many of the characteristics observed by European researchers in right-
wing populist parties, also displays several differences which have to do
with the specificities of the American terrain. Regardless of these differ-
ences however, this use of religion as an identity marker has probably
contributed to putting him in the White House, and it may also help him
stay there. The first two years of the Trump presidency show a persistence
of the patterns we observed at the time of his 2016 campaign and elec-
tion. Despite generally low ratings with the overall population (ranging
between 30 and 42% in his first two years in office), Donald Trump has
enjoyed consistently strong support from white evangelicals (between 70%
at its lowest and 78% at its highest).51 As of January 2019, Trump still
enjoyed the support of 69% of white evangelicals.52 Like in 2016, support
is strongest among those who attend religious services regularly: 61% of
white Catholics and 67% of white evangelicals who attend church at least
once a month viewed Trump’s job performance very favorably.53 This
50 Joe Creech, Righteous Indignation, Religion and the Populist Revolution, Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2006.
51 Alec Tyson, “Disagreements About Trump Widely Seen as Reflecting
Divides Over ‘Other Values and Goals’”, Pew Resarch Center, March 15,
2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/15/disagreements-about-trump-
widely-seen-as-reflecting-divides-over-other-values-and-goals/.
52 Philip Schwadel, Gregory Smith, “Evangelical Approval of Trump Remains High,
but Other Religious Groups Are Less Supportive”, Pew Research Center, March
18, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/18/evangelical-approval-of-
trump-remains-high-but-other-religious-groups-are-less-supportive/.
53 Ibid.
236 M. GAYTE
stems in part from his delivering on his promises, prompting the son of
televangelist and major present-day evangelical leader, Jerry Falwell Jr, to
declare “I think evangelicals have found their dream president.”54 From
his appointment of two Supreme Court justices with impeccable prolife
credentials, his less newsworthy—but nonetheless crucial—appointment
of equally conservative judges to lower federal courts, his executive orders
to allow church leaders to endorse candidates in the pew without risking
losing their tax exempt status, his decisions on transgender people in the
military, Trump is indeed the gift that keeps on giving for conservative
white Christians. What seems to confirm however our previous conclu-
sions is that white voters also support some of his most controversial
policy decisions, including those that directly contradict the Bible, in a
time in which evidence keeps accumulating that white Christians fear the
growing ethnic diversity of their nation (a PRRI survey conducted in June
2018 showed that among all religious groups, white evangelicals were the
only ones to consider the passage to America to a white-minority country
by 2045 as a negative development.55 For historian Jemar Tisby, many
white evangelicals tend to conflate Christianity with nationalism, hence
the rejection of “the other” who threatens the “American way.”56 Robert
Jones, a senior PRRI analyst, argues for his part “that white evangelical
voters have really shifted from being values voters to being what [he calls]
‘nostalgia voters,’ They’re voting to protect a past view of America that
they feel is slipping away,”57 an observation which echoes the “heartland”
trope identified by Paul Taggart.
54 Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “‘Their Dream President’: Trump Just Gave White Evangelicals
a Big Boost”, Washington Post, May 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
acts-of-faith/wp/2017/05/04/their-dream-president-trump-just-gave-white-evangelicals-
a-big-boost/?utm_term=.041288b8e882.
55 Alex Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, Molly Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, PhD,
Robert P. Jones, “American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge,
Participation, and Polarization”, PRRI, July 17, 2018, https://www.prri.org/research/
american-democracy-in-crisis-voters-midterms-trump-election-2018/.
56 Tara Isabella Burton, “The Bible Says to Welcome Immigrants. So Why Don’t White
Evangelicals?”, Vox, October 30, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/30/18035336/
white-evangelicals-immigration-nationalism-christianity-refugee-honduras-migrant.
57 Yonat Shimron, “How White Evangelicals Are Outliers Among US Faith Groups”,
Religion News Service, July 19, 2018, https://ncronline.org/news/people/how-white-eva
ngelicals-are-outliers-among-us-faith-groups.
In this fictional, old-time America, there is no room for strangers, and

their rejection has been patent since Trump’s inauguration. In January
2018, a poll found that 75 percent of white evangelicals saw “the federal
crackdown on undocumented immigrants” as a positive thing, compared
to just 46 percent of Americans overall.58 The fact that the so-called
Muslim ban, the Trump Administration’s executive order banning the
entrance of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, received
the support of three-fifths of white evangelicals, with white Catholics
split exactly in half on the idea, comes thus as no surprise.59 Franklin
Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, a respected evangelical figure,
has supported a total ban on Muslim immigration and defended Trump’s
Muslim ban.60 As to the border wall, while three-fifths of white evan-
gelicals supported it, a 55% majority of white Catholics opposed it.61
According to Daniel Cox, the PRRI research director, “to the extent
Trump frames his policies on protecting Christian, and particularly white
Christian, status” he finds an audience among many white Catholics, if
perhaps not as wide an audience as among white evangelicals,” the differ-
ence between their level of support for Trump policies has to do with their
history as immigrants, which renders them most likely to accept diversity.
Finally, concerning family separation at the border, by many accounts the
most controversial policy to date of the Trump era, it does not seem to
have dented white religious Americans’ support for Trump, even though
it was condemned in unequivocal terms by the USCCB and by several
evangelical figures. White evangelicals may not enjoy seeing families sepa-
rated, but they believe that the media portrayal is probably overblown
and see this as a secondary issue contrary to others on which Trump
can deliver.62 Also, as observed by a political organizer working with
58 Burton, op. cit.

59 Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP at Risk of Losing Catholics?”, CNN , May 1,
2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/gop-catholics-immigration-trump-
hispanics-white/index.html.
60 Brian, “Why Evangelical Voters Support Trump’s Policy on Refugees—Even Though
Evangelical Leaders Object”, Washington Post, July 19, 2018, https://www.washingto
npost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/07/19/in-2017-the-u-s-resettled-fewer-ref
ugees-than-the-rest-of-the-world-thats-a-sharp-change-and-most-evangelicals-are-fine-with-
that/?utm_term=.7563381056f1.
61 Brownstein, op. cit.
62 Michelle Boorstein, Julie Zauzmer, “Why Many White Evangelicals Are Not
Protesting Family Separations on the U.S. Border”, Washington Post, June 18, 2018,
238 M. GAYTE
conservative Christian pastors, while these pastors “don’t want immi-

grants hurt,” “they want to secure the border. They are far more focused
on what they see as a war “for the Christian soul of America,”63 which
brings us full circle to the restoration and battle tropes put forward by
Marzouki and McDonnell.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/18/why-many-
white-evangelical-christians-are-not-protesting-family-separations-on-the-u-s-border/?utm_
term=.f7651af64801.
63 Ibid.
CHAPTER 12
The Populist Challenge to Foreign Policy:

A Transatlantic Perspective
Maya Kandel
The topic of populism in foreign policy is receiving growing attention

in academic and public discourse.1 We define populism, to quote Cas
Mudde, as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated
into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus
‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression
of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.2 ” Mudde has added
the precision that populism is a “thin-centered” ideology, a definition that
is now largely accepted in the academic community: falling short of the
1 The author would like to thank Zachary Courser, at Claremont McKenna College,
for inviting her to join the Tocqueville Project (2017–2018) on “Democratic Discontent:
How Populism and Nationalism are Reshaping Politics in Europe and America.” This
work would not have been possible without it. Another version of this chapter, entitled
“Is There A Populist Foreign Policy?” is pending review at University of Pennsylvania
Press.
2 Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 39:4, 2004.
M. Kandel (B)
Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle (CREW), Paris, France

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_12
240 M. KANDEL
definition of being an ideology itself, populism tends to attach itself to

thicker ideological traditions.
The general characteristics considered as defining all populist parties
are the belief in a virtuous people, a corrupt elite, and in popular
sovereignty. Transposed to foreign policy, they are expressed by a
belief in virtuous peoples fighting against cosmopolitan globalized elites
denounced as concerned with the preservation of their own inter-
ests rather than those of the people, and an obsession with national
sovereignty to reclaim control of national foreign policies, and fate.
In accordance with the “thin-centered” ideology definition, scholars
have opposed right-wing and left-wing populism, including in terms of
foreign policy visions: Bertjan Verbeek and Andrej Zaslove, for example,
distinguish four types of populist parties depending on the ideology they
attach themselves to, and define their specific foreign policy positions
accordingly.3 While the distinction is useful, it fails to acknowledge an
increasing and observable convergence between positions of right-wing
and left-wing populist parties on transnational and international issues,
especially on trade and immigration, as can be observed in 2018 in Italy’s
or France’s major populist parties, left and right, to mention only these
two examples. Several populist parties in Europe have expanded and
refined their positions in recent years, and now offer more than just an
attitude of protest, but rather a “counter-model” on several foreign issues,
offering actual content rather than only attitude.4
This chapter, adopting a transatlantic perspective, argues that contem-
porary populism promotes an alternative vision of international relations,
which carries the main criticism of the existing international system, its
rules, institutions, and norms—the so-called “liberal international order”
(part 1). The Trump presidency in the United States, and its “America
First” doctrine, have given increased traction to this counter-proposal for
foreign policies in the contemporary era, which is further reinforced by
the consolidation and by new victories of populists in European countries
3 Bertjan Verbeek, Andrej Zaslove, “Populism and Foreign Policy”, in Cristobal Rovira
Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Pierre Ostiguy (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017.
4 Here I am using presentations by Gilles Ivaldi and Patrick Moreau from the interna-
tional conference at the University of Toulon in June 2018 on “Faces of Contemporary
Populism in Europe and the United States,” on several European cases.
12 THE POPULIST CHALLENGE TO FOREIGN POLICY … 241
(part 2). These trends, as well as the intensification of transatlantic circu-

lations between the populist rights in Europe and in the U.S., present
a growing challenge to the existing international liberal order, and espe-
cially one of its foundations, the West, as embodied by the transatlantic
institutions built under the guidance of the U.S., and sustained thanks to
U.S. power, after the Second World War (part 3). It is already having a
profound impact on international relations and on the organization of an
international system currently undergoing a major power transition.
European Populists and the World

Western Democracies and the Crisis of Globalization
Angelos Chryssogelos has defined populism as a reaction to the crisis of
political representation provoked by dislocations caused by the political
and economic consequences of globalization.5 Three characteristics are
especially relevant to understand populist positions in the transatlantic
world: the rise of inequalities and the effects of the 2007–2008 economic
crisis; the threat of terrorism, which provides for easy manipulation of
certain themes dear to populists; all that in the context of profound
changes on the European, and international scene, including major shifts
in powers relations, starting with the rise of Chinese power, new actors,
and a “bad boy” foreign policy coming from Russia. In effect, the combi-
nation of these trends has provoked a crisis of globalization, defined as
the economic movement of increased relations and integrations of world
economies.
Verbeek and Zaslove have established an interesting typology arguing
that populist parties’ foreign policy positions differ depending on their
attaching ideology, distinguishing between four types of populist parties,
each attaching salience to different policy issues (populist radical right,
populist market liberal, populist regionalist, and populist left).6 However,
in practice, there has been a convergence of foreign policy positions, and
5 Angelos Chryssogelos, “Populism in Foreign Policy”, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of

Politics, Online Publication, July 2017.
6 Bertjan Verbeek, Andrej Zaslove, “Populism and Foreign Policy”, in Cristobal Rovira
Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Pierre Ostiguy (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, 2017.
242 M. KANDEL
it is possible to describe the shared core beliefs and subsequent challenge

to foreign policy.
In Europe as in the U.S., populists share a number of core beliefs on
international relations, regarding economic globalization, immigration,
international institutions and cooperation, and, but with some geograph-
ical variations, Russia. Populist movements in Europe share a common
hostility toward the United States and U.S. foreign policy, while American
and European populists alike resent the European Union.7 Criticism of
international institutions is at the heart of the populist creed which wants
to reclaim power for “the people,” vs. a decried “global elite” accused of
working against nations, for its own interest. All populist parties express
a preference for closed borders for protection against migrations and
unemployment fueled by free trade.
The success of populist discourse is based on a crisis of legitimacy of
contemporary Western democracies and of the international system that
they have built. Populists have raised the profile of foreign affairs with
public opinion, and that in itself has an impact on the terms of the debate
and on policy choices. The evolution of the media landscape, and the
enormous importance taken by social media in the public sphere, and in
particular in the political sphere, means foreign policy is no longer an
“elite game,” conducted behind closed doors by politicians and diplo-
mats. Digital developments also make it easier for the public to hold
politicians to account over high-level deals such as free trade agreements
(remember TTIP), or plans like the EU–Turkey deal to manage refugee
flows—while the crisis of legitimacy of all “elites,” including journalists,
experts and academics, makes it harder to explain and justify choices
on complex international issues. Social media has also made far-right
conspiracy theories more pervasive, helped by the reach of U.S. President
Trump’s Twitter feed: Trump has repeatedly retweeted conspiracy theo-
ries and memes from the dark corners of the alt-right web, giving them
visibility and legitimacy thanks to his more than 66 million followers.8
7 Jean-Yves Camus, « Montée des populismes et des nationalismes dans le monde:

coïncidence ou phénomène global? », Questions Internationales, n°83, janvier-février 2017.
8 Mike McIntire, Karen Yourish, Larry Buchanan, “In Trump’s Twitter Feed:
Conspiracy-Mongers, Racists and Spies”, The New York Times, November 2, 2019.
Historian Mark Fenster goes so far as to argue that conspiracy theories

can be viewed as a “populist theory of power.”9
Some populist parties have existed for a long time, and their foreign
policy positions in particular have evolved: such is the case of the French
Front National, which used to be pro-NATO and anti-Soviet during
the Cold War, before becoming much more sympathetic to Russian
perspectives since the 1990s. Other countries have experienced anterior
versions of populism in power, or even former “Populist Parties,” the U.S.
being a prime example10 : however, the nineteenth century Populist Party
defended progressive ideas on economic issues, which probably explains
the positive vision of populism in America until recently.11 Walter Russell
Mead, who created a typology of U.S. foreign policy,12 has linked Tea
Party populism to the Jacksonian tradition, offering a more sophisticated
image of populist foreign policy positions in a 2011 article, defining Jack-
sonian populism in foreign policy by unilateralism, militarism and hostility
to all things multilateral, and to the U.S. role as world policeman—
correctly stating that this view fundamentally rejects large parts of the
so-called consensus characteristic of the foreign policy establishment.13
This article focuses on a transatlantic perspective, thereby not studying
populism in other regions, where historical experiences of populism are
also specific and important—as in Latin America, but one could also
consider contemporary India, as well as other countries and regions.
9 Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
10 Tamara Boussac, « Le populisme aux Etats-Unis, du XIXe siècle à Donald Trump
», Questions Internationales, n°83, janvier-février 2017; Pierre Melandri, « La rhétorique
populiste aux Etats-Unis », Vingtième Siècle, n°56, octobre-décembre 1997.
11 Joshua Zeitz, “Historians Have Long Thought Populism Was a Good Thing. Are
They Wrong?” Politico Magazine, 14 janvier 2018.
12 Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It
Changed the World, Knopf, 2001.
13 Walter Russell Mead, “The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs,
March–April 2011.
244 M. KANDEL
An Alternative Vision of International Relations

According to a systematic study of European populist parties (left and
right) positions on foreign issues by the European think tank Euro-
pean Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR),14 there are similar trends
in European populists’ view of the world: these movements are skeptical
about the European Union, resent the U.S. and particularly U.S. foreign
policy and military interventions, are sympathetic to Russia, and prefer
borders closed, migration low, and trade protected. Insurgent parties are
winning seats in local, regional, and national parliaments, as well as in
the European Parliament, and challenging establishment views on how
policymaking should be done, and which direction foreign policy should
take. They have already managed to reframe the debate on several issues
in Europe, France being a prime example, especially on immigration.
Another example of populism impacting foreign policy positions can be
observed with the narrative developed by French president Emmanuel
Macron of a “Europe that protects” policy (une Europe qui protège).
The most important factor in Europe has arguably been the impact
of the refugee crisis across the EU, the interplay between its foreign
and domestic dimensions, and its use by political leaders, especially in
Eastern European countries, as a way to maintain popular support and
win elections.
One interesting insight from the ECFR study is the relative consensus
on the existential threats facing the EU: for 34 out of 45 populist parties
surveyed in the study, the refugee crisis or the threat of terrorism and
radical Islamism (these issues were inextricably linked in the responses)
were among the top two threats facing the EU. There was also a general
agreement on the cause of these threats, U.S. strategy in the Middle East
being the most popular answer, with the violence sponsored by Bashar al-
Assad’s regime in Syria in second place. The most significant issue dividing
populist parties is how to engage with Russia. There is general sympathy
for Russian foreign policy (30 parties expressed support for at least some
recent Russian positions, particularly its intervention in Syria), and a sense
that the EU’s policy on its neighborhood should not be pitted against
14 Susi Dennison, Dina Pardijs, The World According to Europe’s Insurgent Parties,
ECFR, June 2016. On populism and foreign policy in Europe, also see: Rosa Balfour, Janis
A. Emmanouilidis, Catherine Fieschi, Heather Grabbe, Christopher Hill, Timo Lochocki,
Marie Mendras, Cas Mudde, Mari K. Niemi, Juliane Schmidt, Corina Stratulat, Europe’s
Troublemakers: The Populist Challenge to Foreign Policy, March 2016.
Russia. These views on Russia policy do not fall naturally along the lines
of left and right, but tend more toward national perspectives, depending
on geography. Some parties in countries where the threat from Russia
was felt more acutely—the Baltic countries, Finland, Sweden, Poland,
Hungary—were in favor of keeping EU sanctions, while also trying to
pursue dialogue. The parties were also divided over security questions,
with seven responding that NATO should build up militarily against the
Russian threat; eight arguing that NATO should take in more members
from the European neighborhood; and another seven arguing for their
countries to withdraw from the alliance altogether.
An important article by Olivier Schmitt and François Stéphane on the
French Front National’s “alternative vision of international relations” has
also illustrated how the FN (which has now been renamed Rassemble-
ment National or RN) has rearticulated its foreign policy views in the
past decade, and how they now reflect the current narrative coming from
Moscow.15 They show that authors and politicians of the French extreme-
right ecosystem, influencing RN discourse, denounce the pretense of
American governments to represent the “good” side and strongly resent
and reject the notion of American exceptionalism. Antagonism toward
the EU is a strong feature as well. These foreign policy characteristics,
it should be noted, are common to left-wing populist parties, Jean-Luc
Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, to stay in France.
Schmitt and Stéphane also point out that authors of the French
extreme-right often refer to two American references as validating their
views: the first is Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, which was
translated in France in 1997, and is used to read international relations
as a civilizational competition between a Christian West and other non-
Christian civilizations. The second is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand
Chessboard, interpreted by these authors as proof that the U.S. is an impe-
rialist power with a grand plan to dominate Eurasia, tame Russia and rule
the world. Hostility against the U.S. also translates into hostility against
globalization, considered as an “Americanization” of the world which
threatens local cultures, economies, jobs, and national identities.
Another important feature of the French extreme-right vision of
international relations, common to all populist parties, is the idea that
15 François Stéphane, Olivier Schmitt, « L’extrême-droite française contemporaine et le

monde: une vision alternative des relations internationales », Revue Interrogations, n°21,
December 2015.
246 M. KANDEL
“everything is linked”—and for the most part a consequence of U.S.

“imperialism” (which some scholars would describe rather as hegemony,
or primacy). Events are interpreted as part of a larger frame always
involving the U.S., with a conspiracy twist which denies local actors any
autonomy, whether in Ukraine, Syria, or anywhere else. The coherence
of this framework presents an alternative vision of international relations,
based on a negation of complexity thanks to a determinist view where
everything proceeds from the “imperialism” of the U.S. and a conspiracy-
theory interpretation of all events. The way to reconcile this with the
Trump presidency is to embrace arguments developed by the American
president himself, albeit for different reasons, mostly of a conspiracy of
“fake news” and a “deep state” to resist his agenda—a view also put
forward by Russian state-news and by Putin himself, and by a growing
number of people in Europe generally.
Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump:

The Populist vs. The System
Donald Trump and the World
To understand Trump’s foreign policy, one needs to consider his
core beliefs or impulses that he has held to consistently over many
decades, namely opposition to America’s alliance arrangements, support
for a mercantilist global economic system, and support for authoritarian
regimes, particularly Russia (and now—but for how long? North Korea).
These views were best described by Brookings scholar Thomas Wright
in an article written in early 2016.16 As Wright describes it, “Trump’s
views on alliances are based on the belief that the U.S. has no interest in
being forward deployed nor in guaranteeing freedom of the seas, in stark
contrast with the bipartisan consensus that has prevailed since 1945.”
Trump’s second core belief is that the United States is at a disadvan-
tage in the global economy, in particular on trade, because it has been
taken advantage of. Trump views the global economy as a zero-sum
game. Third, Trump also has a long-standing admiration for authori-
tarian strongmen, especially Putin. This leads to an “America First” vision
stating that the U.S. is in a steep decline largely because of its foreign
policy, especially because of the “unfair deal” (as Trump often puts it)
16 Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy”, Politico, January 20, 2016.
the country gets from its alliances and more generally from international
institutions, especially the UN, WTO, or NATO—institutions the U.S.
itself had built and sustained for several decades after World War II.
Trump has specifically said that the US-led liberal international order,
defined by these institutions, had failed Americans, and said he wanted
the U.S. to focus on a strictly defined (narrower) set of national inter-
ests, rather than on the broader notions of liberal order that have shaped
U.S. strategy since the World War II. It is a view of the international
scene as a global arena of intense competition and zero-sum game where
the notion of “international community” doesn’t exist. He specifically
rejected the notion of U.S. exceptionalism, making himself an exception
in U.S. recent history, arguing that the U.S. is a “normal” country, or
should be, because it is no different from other powers on the inter-
national scene.17 This makes him very different from his predecessor,
Barack Obama, who already had attempted a relative disengagement of
U.S. international commitments to focus on “nation-building at home”
(and had to fight the Washington foreign policy establishment, “the blob”
as he put it18 ). The major difference between Obama and Trump is their
view on alliances: for Obama, allies were part of the solution, for Trump
they are the source of all problems. This difference has major conse-
quences for Europeans, the transatlantic relationship, and multilateralism,
a necessary principle for the liberal international order to function—thus
exist.
Defining Trumpism in Foreign Policy: From the Axis of Adults

to America First
A very interesting article in the online magazine War on the Rocks
analyzed 90 articles on Trump’s foreign policy and showed the amazing
range of interpretations on Trump’s foreign policy, ranging from table
rase to a return to nineteenth century foreign policy, to continuity with
Republican presidents or even Obama.19 Only an analysis based on facts
and actual decisions can help determine U.S. foreign policy under Trump.
17 On Exceptionalism and U.S. foreign policy: Maya Kandel, Les Etats-Unis et le monde,
de George Washington à Donald Trump, Paris: Perrin, 2018.
18 Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine”, The Atlantic, April 2016.
19 James Benkowski, A. Bradley Potter, “The Center Cannot Hold: Continuity and
Change in Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy”, War on the Rocks, November 1, 2017.
248 M. KANDEL
A careful case-based study has allowed us in a previous article to define a

typology of four major “logics of action” in Trump decision-making on
major foreign policy issues in 2017.20 Four dominant logics have been
identified:
– Axis of adults21 : this mainly describes decisions and continuity on

national security issues, in 2017, embodied by the so-called “adults”
or supporters of the traditional internationalist consensus on U.S.
foreign policy (however, the last of these adults, Defense secre-
tary James Mattis, resigned in December, 2018). It illustrates the
autonomy that the Pentagon has gained under Trump, as opposed
to the micro-management of the Obama White House on the same
issues;
– Anything but Obama: decisions in this category reflect Donald
Trump’s inclination (obsession) to destroy Obama’s foreign policy
legacy, namely on climate, Cuba, and Iran. One must note however
that his anti-Obama views on these issues often coincided with
common strongly held Republican positions, whereby one could
argue that any Republican administration could have taken similar
decisions;
– America First: stemming from Trump’s decades-old “instincts,” his
view of the world as underlined above, this logic has been applied to
trade, immigration policy, and multilateralism in general, and seems
to be describing more and more precisely a Trump “doctrine” for
foreign policy. However, other agencies and branches of government
(Congress) have resisted certain policies coming from the White
House;
– Chaos or schizophrenia describes Russia policy, where the president
systematically takes positions that run counter to the actual policy
decisions of the rest of the government, from the Vice President to
the Department of State to the Pentagon to Treasury, and including
Congress, all of which have taken a much more aggressive stance
20 Maya Kandel, « Donald Trump a-t-il changé la politique étrangère américaine? »,

Cadernos de Politica Exterior, Vol 3 n°6, 2e semestre 2017.
21 See James Mann, “The Adults in the Room”, The New York Review of Books, October
26, 2017.
against Russia than was the case under the previous administration.22
It also applies to other areas where Trump or his family clan in the
White House (Jared Kushner) insert themselves, sometimes counter
to the policy conducted by other agencies, such as the Pentagon (on
Syria policy).
This typology is still helpful in 2019 (at the time of this writing). The
destruction of major Obama legacy in foreign policy has been achieved,
with the U.S. rejecting the JCPOA (after the Paris Climate Accord and
Obama policy of opening to Cuba). The “axis of adults,” reduced to the
Pentagon, still reigns on pure national security issues, accentuating the
militarization of U.S. foreign policy, already a noted evolution.23
On Russia, chaos and schizophrenia still dominate, a very revealing
anomaly that translates Trump’s still mysterious affection for Russia and
Putin, expressed many times.24 In March 2018, the U.S. president was
repeating that Russia should be a partner and would help with world
problems even though his own administration was actually taking sanc-
tions against the Russian government following the Skripal case in Great
Britain.
The major evolution is that the “America First” logic is gaining trac-
tion, with Trump now having launched four trade wars as of this writing:
against the EU, Mexico and Canada, China, and the WTO. Hostility to
multilateralism is reflected for the second time in the White House budget
proposal for 2019, when it is not directly expressed by the U.S. pres-
ident at the G7 summit in Canada. The strengthening of this America
First logic of action is particularly obvious on the two themes dearest
to Trump’s base: trade and immigration, where Trump supporters have
the most distinctive views.25 If his first year in power seemed to vali-
date, in the foreign policy realm, the idea of an “axis of adults” reigning
22 Details in Maya Kandel, « Donald Trump a-t-il changé la politique étrangère

américaine? », Cadernos de Politica Exterior, Vol 3 n°6, 2e semestre 2017.
23 Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and The Military Became Everything, New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.
24 Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie, Nathan McDermott, “80 Times Trump Talked
About Putin”, CNN , June 18, 2018.
25 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, What Americans Think About America
First, October 2017: https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/what-americans-
think-about-america-first.
250 M. KANDEL
on key issues and maintaining this pre-existing foreign policy post-WWII

consensus, 2018 has led to a progressive demise of the so-called adults,
with Trump affirming his leadership on foreign policy in accordance with
his “America First” instincts.
The Republican Congress has rejected just a few aspects of Trump’s
agenda, refusing for 2018 most of the proposed cuts on the interna-
tional affairs budget. Indeed, many Republicans have happily converted
to Trumpism: Senator Tom Cotton is a good illustration of conversion to
America First to advance strong stances on other national security issues,
but examples abound.26 The only exception, for now, is Russia. In any
event, current GOP foreign policy positions have moved very far from the
post-World War II tradition of internationalism, and even from post-Cold
War neoconservatism.27
Fighting the Status Quo, Redefining the West:

Populists and the Transatlantic Relation
Transatlantic Circulations of Ideas
An excellent article by Iskander Rehman presented a convincing case
on the influence of the American radical right on the foreign policy
of the Trump White House.28 Rehman demonstrates the clear intellec-
tual linkage between the American far right and certain aspects of the
Trump administration’s worldview, arguing that “Thus far, movements
composing the alt-right had been excluded from power and thus provided
with little opportunity to shape the trajectory of their nation’s external
affairs. But Trump was elected and their ideas are now spilling into the
bloodstream of American power.” In Rehman’s words, “to the extent that
there is some form of transnational ideology guiding the Trump adminis-
tration’s actions, it is traditionalism. Spearheaded by far-right intellectual
such as the Frenchman Alain de Benoist or the Russian Alexander Dugin,
traditionalism is anti-cosmopolitan, anti-secular, illiberal, and suffused
26 Jeffrey Toobin, “Is Tom Cotton the Future of Trumpism”, The New Yorker,
November 13, 2017.
27 Jeffrey Goldberg, “A White House Official Describes the Trump Doctrine: We’re
America, Bitch”, The Atlantic, June 11, 2018.
28 Iskander Rehman, “Rise of the Reactionaries: The American Far Right and U.S.
Foreign Policy”, The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2018.
with decadentism… convinced that the ‘Judeo-Christian West’ has been

almost fatally weakened by the forces of postmodernism and ethno-
cultural pluralism, and is ensnared in an existential struggle with rival
civilizational units such as the Muslim world.29 ” This form of “tradition-
alism” was best expressed in Trump’s July 2017 Warsaw speech stressing
the importance of tradition and faith, and decrying the threat of the
“bureaucracy.”30
There has been an intensification of transatlantic circulations between
like-minded intellectuals and partisans on the right in the past decade. The
Arktos website, a Swedish radical right website created in 2009 has played
a major role as the main translator and publisher of many publications of
the European extreme-right ideologues in English, playing a crucial role
in identifying, translating, and circulating traditionalism views in English,
especially French ideologues such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye,
as well as the Russian thinker Alexander Dugin.31 In 2010, a young
man named Richard Spencer, who had spent a few years of studies in
Germany on European intellectual thought, created the website (and the
term) “Alternative Right ” to unite forces and groups to the right of the
Republican Party, pushing white nationalism into the digital era, enlarging
their audience and using inspiration from European intellectuals. Spencer
describes himself as the mentor of Stephen Miller, a Trump nationalist
adviser who is still in the White House as of December 2019 (they met
at Duke) and is the author of the aforementioned Warsaw speech.
From 2011 on, the National Policy Institute, the white supremacists’
think tank under the leadership of Spencer organized annual conferences
featuring European extreme-right ideologues. The first in 2011, Towards
a New Nationalism, featured Alain de Benoist. Others followed, some in
Europe, associating Arktos, and inviting other European traditionalists,
including Dugin. All have also been invited by Jared Taylor’s American
Renaissance annual conference. On the intellectual level, the U.S. alt-right
29 Alain de Benoist, Critiques théoriques, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2002; Alexandre

Douguine, Le Prophète de l’Eurasisme, Paris: Avatar Editions, 2006. See also Laruelle, op.
cit.
30 The White House, “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland”, Warsaw,
July 6, 2017.
31 https://arktos.com/.
252 M. KANDEL
owes a lot to French ideologues, in particular Alain de Benoist and Guil-

laume Faye.32 Both have been translated in English. The “Identitaires,” a
more recent French nationalist group, was identified by Breitbart as the
“hipsters of the alt-right.” Greg Johnson, founder of the site Counter-
Currents, says he corresponds with De Benoist, and frequently highlights
the intellectual debt of the U.S. alt-right to French ideologues of the
Nouvelle Droite (the twitter handle of his site is @NewRightAmerica).
More recently, the influence of Renaud Camus’ “Great replacement”
argument (Le grand remplacement, published in 2012) was clear during
the demonstration in Charlottesville in August 2017, with the slogan
used by supremacists “you will not replace us.33 ” What they have in
common is a vision of Europe based not on the legacy of the Enlight-
enment movement of Western ideals of reason, rights and norms, but
on an ethno-cultural determinism based on the Judeo-Christian religious
heritage of Europeans and the color of the skin (white). This vision has a
lot in common with the vision pushed by Putin, for reasons that have been
demonstrated by several scholars.34 It also rejects the West as defined by
the transatlantic institutions that define it.
Reaching the Tipping Point: Transatlantic Populism’s Contribution

to Foreign Policies
Most European populists don’t want to kill the EU anymore, a side-
effect of Brexit, which has made exiting the E.U. much less appealing:
the major European populist parties, from France to Italy and Hungary,
32 Laura Raim, « La nouvelle droite américaine: enquête sur la pensée Trump », Medi-
apart, 9 novembre 2016; Dana Kennedy, “The French Ideologues Who Inspired the
Alt-Right”, The Daily Beast, 12 mai 2016.
33 Thomas Chatterton Williams, “The French Origins of You Will Not Replace Us ”,
The New Yorker, 4 décembre 2017. Reference to Camus’ “great replacement” was also
invoked by the author of the Christchurch terrorist attack in New Zealand in March,
2019.
34 As I argued in an article for Le Monde, “MM. Trump et Poutine convergent vers une
vision alternative des relations internationales », 12 juillet 2018. Also see Nicolas Lebourg,
« Les droites extrêmes dans le champ magnétique de la Russie », Carnegie Endowment
for Ethics in International Affairs, May 2018; Nicolas Hénin, La France russe, Paris:
Fayard, 2016; Jean-Yves Camus, “A Long-Lasting Friendship. Alexander Dugin and the
French Radical Right”, in Marlène Laruelle (ed.), Eurasianism and the European Far
Right Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015.
now intend to transform the EU from the inside.35 But the advent of
an illiberal Europe would confirm the end of the democratic century, or
at least redefine the European project.36 The most elaborate counter-
proposal for the European project has come from Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán, who has officially embraced “illiberal democ-
racy”; and sees himself as “Europe’s savior.37 ” His counter-proposal is
gaining traction throughout Europe, and even though it is not centered
on foreign policy, it has major strategic implications for the transatlantic
relation and Europe’s place in the world.
Since 2014, Orbán has expressed his support for illiberal democ-
racy, even declaring, in a July 2018 speech, that “there is an alternative
to liberal democracy: it is called Christian democracy.38 ” Warning his
supporters of the undergoing battle of ideas, he insisted that Christian
democracy “is not about defending religious articles of faith,” but about
protecting “the ways of life springing from Christian culture: human
dignity, the family and the nation.” He went from there to declare
Christian democracy “illiberal” by opposition to “liberal democracy,”
justifying the opposition by citing three key issues: Liberal democracy
favors multiculturalism, while Christian democracy “gives priority to
Christian culture”; liberal democracy “is pro-immigration, while Chris-
tian democracy is anti-immigration”; and liberal democracy “sides with
adaptable family models” rather than the Christian family model (“not
submitting to Islam” is also an important part of the appeal of a “Chris-
tian democracy” for Orbán, although it is less emphatically emphasized in
the speech—but it is present, notably through a praise for Israel). Orbán’s
theorization of “illiberal democracy” appeals to a growing segment of the
American right, and was repeatedly praised during a conference organized
35 Maya Kandel, Caroline Gondaud, “Populism, the European Elections, and the Future
of EU Foreign Policy”, War on the Rocks, June 11, 2019.
36 Yasha Mounk, Roberto Stefan Foa, “The End of the Democratic Century”, Foreign
Affairs, 97:3 (May/June 2018), pp. 29–36. And, in the same issue, Ivan Krastev, “Eastern
Europe’s Illiberal Revolution” as well as Krastev’s book, Le destin de l’Europe (Clermont-
Ferrand: Premier Parallèle, 2017).
37 Elisabeth Zerofsky, “Viktor Orbán’s Far-Right Vision for Europe”, The New Yorker,
January 7, 2019.
38 Benjamin Haddad, Le paradis perdu. L’Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions
européennes, Paris: Grasset, 2019), pp. 216–226; Marc Plattner, “Illiberal Democracy and
the Struggle on the Right”, Journal of Democracy, 30:1 (January 2019), pp. 5–19.
254 M. KANDEL
in Washington in July, 2019, by the Israeli-American intellectual Yoram

Hazony, author of the book, The Virtue of Nationalism.39
Orbán’s speech is the key to understand the deeper trends under
the partisan realignment going on in the transatlantic space. By making
support for liberal democracy seem inseparable from support for multicul-
turalism, open immigration policies, and nontraditional family structures,
Orbán is forging a new coalition on the right, trying to attract members of
another growing movement of “anti-PC” (anti-politically correct) advo-
cates, many of whom come from the left but have been alienated by
leftist parties’ defense of minority rights in general. Salvini’s League has
been undergoing a similar evolution, visibly and symbolically enrolling
traditionalist elements from the Catholic Church, an unexpected evolu-
tion for his party, previously known as the Northern League, which
had notoriously difficult relations with the Italian clergy.40 In France,
a similar evolution is being orchestrated by Marion Maréchal Le Pen
for the Rassemblement National, with the traditional right (Les Républi-
cains ) also moving closer to Catholic traditionalists in recent years. All of
these leaders have also been meeting regularly at the summit of the World
Congress of Families (WCF), an American coalition of ultra-conservative
activists which has links to far-right politicians and movements in several
European countries, including Italy, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Serbia,
as well as Russia.41
Orbán uses the term “liberal” of “liberal democracy” in the way Amer-
icans use “liberal” to characterize the left side of the political spectrum,
meaning “progressive” as opposed to “conservative.” In Europe, the term
“liberal” is more generally used to describe free-market policies and its
advocates (as in “neoliberal” economic principles). Of course, Orbán’s
effort to blur these two different meanings of liberalism is helped by the
fact that the opposing camp does hold views that are close to those of
U.S. liberals on social and cultural issues. Such confusion did not start
39 See (to be published): Maya Kandel, « Le néonationalisme américain: La nouvelle

droite américaine et le monde », Le Débat, janvier 2020.
40 Jérôme Gautheret, « L’Italie sous la botte des ultra-conservateurs », Le Monde, 3
décembre 2018.
41 Claire Provost, Adam Ramsay, “Trump-Linked US Christian ‘Fundamentalists’ Pour
Millions of ‘Dark Money’ into EUROPE, Boosting the Far Right”, Open Democracy,
March 27, 2019.
with Orbán however: the Sargentini Report, the basis for the E.U. proce-
dure against Orbán’s attacks on the rule of law (using Article 7 of the
Treaty of European Union), condemned in the same terms Hungary’s
authoritarian slide on pluralism, justice, and the media, and its immigra-
tion policies and treatment of sexual minorities, thereby obscuring the
meaning of the Article 7 procedure.42 Confusing these two issues, author-
itarian impulses and social conservatism (or traditionalism), actually helps
governments that have been sliding toward authoritarianism.43
Long before Orbán, Russia has been at the forefront of this crusade
for illiberal democracy. This is not to say that Russia is the reason behind
Brexit, Trump, Matteo Salvini in Italy, or Sebastian Kurz in Austria:
anti-E.U. bashing has been a feature of the British political debate for
decades; Trump is the product of forty years of anti-elite and anti-
multilateralism discourse from the Gingrich-GOP playbook; Salvini was
preceded by 25 years of Berlusconi-dominated political life in Italy; and
Austria had Jörg Haider before it had Sebastian Kurz. But the genius
of Russia’s information strategy has precisely been to exploit national
contexts, with the great help of social networks, to the best of its inter-
ests. This Russian crusade for illiberal democracy has implications for the
way countries envision their foreign relations and international relations
in general, and the international order and power relations in particular.
Therefore what matters more than interference in elections or Russian
money financing political parties in Europe and successful lobbies in the
U.S., is how this narrative is gaining momentum on the political right
on both sides of the Atlantic, and influencing the way the leaders of this
new right consider international relations and reconsider their policy, in
the new context of great power competition, realkpolitik, and a transac-
tional approach to foreign relations—and the demise of multilateralism.
42 Report on a proposal calling on the Council to determine, pursuant to Article 7(1)

of the Treaty on European Union, the existence of a clear risk of a serious breach by
Hungary of the values on which the Union is founded (2017/2131(INL), Rapporteur:
Judith Sargentini, 4 July 2018: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-
2018-0250_EN.html (accessed April 27, 2019).
43 Dalibor Rohac, “In Hungary, Social Conservatism and Authoritarianism Aren’t the
Same”, Foreign Policy, September 11, 2018.
256 M. KANDEL
As Vladislav Sourkov, the founder of Russia United (Putin’s party) actu-

ally said, “Politicians worry about Russian interference in their elections.
In reality, Russia is interfering with their brain.44 ”
The ultimate objective of Putin is to redefine Europe as part of Eurasia,
in order to detach it from the Euro-Atlantic space, which has character-
ized “the West” for the past century, and is both the basis of the Atlantic
Alliance and the pillar of the current liberal international order. Putin has
Russia’s interests in mind and, simply said, he wants to divide and weaken
the E.U., and drive the U.S. out of Europe. China has similar objectives,
and the two countries have an increasingly close strategic partnership.45
The difference between them lies in the desired end-state of their foreign
policies: Russia wants the end of the U.S.-led order, because it believes
it is more powerful as a rogue state in a rule-less international system,
while China wants to replace the U.S.-led order by a China-led order.
Detaching the U.S. from Europe might actually suit a growing portion
of the public in Trump’s America, with Americans tired of sponsoring
the defense of Europeans through NATO, while the U.S. foreign policy
establishment is increasingly turning its attention to China.
Academic studies have demonstrated the reliability and stability of
international agreements of democratic regimes, because of electoral and
institutional constraints, but more importantly as a result of the existing
and stable bipartisan consensus on the objectives and means of foreign
policy. These factors, which make democracies more reliable than author-
itarian regimes, have however been weakening in several countries, in
particular because of populist movements. This has been particularly true
in the United States, long before Trump’s election, because extreme
partisan polarization has grown to include most areas of foreign policy;
and because increasing centralization of power has put more and more
power in the hands of the president, weakening the role of Congress
(sometimes by its own making) in major foreign policy decisions; also.
This threatens the very structure of multilateralism, the foundation of
international security protected principally by Washington since 1945. In
this respect, Trump is but a symptom of the U.S.-driven trend that began
in the late 1990s (Kosovo 1999, disavowal of the Kyoto climate protocol
44 Isabelle Mandraud, « Vladimir Poutine, parrain de l’extrême-droite européenne », Le

Monde, 3 avril 2019.
45 Nadège Rolland, “A China-Russia Condominium over Eurasia”, Survival 61:1, 2019,
pp. 7–22.
in 2001, Iraq 2003). However, Trump has taken the movement one step
further by systematically rejecting agreements achieved by his predecessor.
For allies and enemies alike, it raises the question of whether the U.S.
word can be trusted in the future.46
As this chapter attempted to demonstrate, the America First foreign
policy of the Trump administration reinforces the alternative vision of
international relations promoted by illiberal populists in Europe and
the U.S. This foreign policy narrative echoes the Russian foreign policy
discourse, also a critical (some would argue destructive) position on the
contemporary international system, as well as the Chinese narrative, both
contesting Western domination of existing international institutions. The
Trump presidency is thus accelerating the close of the post-Cold War era
and of the liberal international order. At stake is the very definition of
“the West” as a community of countries with shared liberal values and
interests.
46 Jean Guisnel, « Qui peut aujourd’hui faire confiance à la parole des Etats-Unis », Le
Point, 15 mai 2018.
Conclusion
The picture which emerges from this exploration of different facets of

the most recent manifestations of populism in Western Europe and the
US is that of a populism which is now being entrenched in the polit-
ical system—whether it be with populist actors in power, with populist
parties in opposition yet enjoying growing electoral support, or even
with the mainstreaming of right-wing populism, such as the Conservative
party in the UK. Populism is part of the political landscape. Admittedly,
this is especially true for right-wing populism; left-wing populism is less
successful and its impact is more limited, but it is also more recent, and
this could change in the years to come.
Populism is therefore increasingly influential, all the more so since
it is now championed by the president of the world’s leading power,
Donald Trump, standing as a right-wing populist. Through his discourse
and policies, an alternative political model is slowly emerging and
gaining increasing traction, with nationalism as its main axis. It combines
protectionism, or economic nationalism (“America first”), with anti-
immigration policies, hostility to multilateralism and to the liberal interna-
tional order, all wrapped up in a populist rhetoric. The implementation of
this disruptive model by the US reinforces the positioning of like-minded
European parties. It shows that populist forces can no longer be dismissed
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 259
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7
260 CONCLUSION
as mere protest parties,1 opposing but not proposing—it proves that they
can be proactive, offering actual counter-models.
Interestingly, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, considered
as the architect of the 2016 victory, has been trying to export his model
and set up a kind of international alliance of right-wing populists. To
this end, in 2017 he set up the Movement, a think tank based in Brus-
sels, to promote and coordinate European right-wing populism, with a
view to provoke an upsurge in the 2019 European elections—as it turned
out, the anticipated populist landslide did not materialize, as liberal and
green parties also made significant gains.2 Yet beyond the result, what is
worth underlining is that the Movement actually failed in its endeavor to
rally European right-wing populists. Most parties proved reluctant toward
this US-led venture. This is not surprising though, given the nationalist
dimension of these parties, which are not inclined to internationalism in
general, and to US interference in particular, often regarded as a form
of imperialism. National sovereignty and national interest come first for
these parties, and Bannon is seen as a “foreign import.” As Marine Le
Pen explicitly stated:
Mr. Bannon is not from any European country, he is American (…)

Because we are attached to our liberty, attached to our sovereignty,
we together, the representatives of the different peoples of Europe, are
the ones who will shape the political forces that aim specifically to
save Europe.3
The national anchoring of right-wing populism is part of its very nature,

making such cross-regional alliances difficult in practice, although they
might appear appealing at first sight: in terms of image, an association
with Trump’s political guru may be tempting, as well as the logistical,
advisory and possibly financial support that could be drawn from it—in
1 J. W. Müller, “Populism and Constitutionalism” in C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart,

P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University
Press, 2017, p. 735; N. Urbinati, “The Populist Phenomenon”, Raisons politiques, 51:3,
2013, pp. 137–154.
2 S.B. Hobolt, ‘EU elections analysis: Centrists in retreat but no far-right populist surge’.
Sky News, 27 May 2019.
3 A. Giuffrida, “Marine Le Pen: Steve Bannon has no part to play in ‘saving Europe,’”
The Guardian, 8 October 2018.
CONCLUSION 261
short, yes to cooperation, no to interference. The balance seems hard to

strike, judging from the limited success of Bannon’s endeavor so far.
This brings us back to the initial aim of this edited volume: identifying
differences and commonalities, avoiding conflation, and encouraging
cross-fertilization. What comes out of this comparative outlook is that
there are national variations in the manifestations of populism which are
related to its context-sensitive dimension. A case in point has to do with
the use of religious identitarian tropes by populist movements on both
sides of the Atlantic. While this seems to work to the advantage of Donald
Trump in the United States, as evidenced by the strong support he enjoys
on the part of the most religiously observant white Americans, the oppo-
site seems to be true in Europe, with the tendency to vote for a populist
candidate decreasing as the religiosity of voters increases.4 The “Chris-
tian nationalism” which now has a solid footing in the US is not getting
much traction in Western Europe, Steve Bannon’s specific efforts to that
effect notwithstanding. Another difference between the United States and
Western Europe lies in the connotations associated with the word “pop-
ulism,” which was positively connoted in the United States—at least until
Donald Trump’s advent. Yet, the People’s Party of the late nineteenth
century’s fight against the very real and damaging collusion of money
and political power, to the detriment of farmers, was not beyond “other-
ing” certain groups it deemed harmful to its interests, such as Chinese
immigrants.5
Yet, there are also striking similarities which confirm the expansion
of populism, its adaptability to different backgrounds, political, social,
and economic contexts. The dynamic at work is very much alike. In
particular, all the manifestations explored in this book exhibit the core
features of populism: people-centrism and anti-elitism. Who “the people”
are depends on the context and on the host/thick ideology to which
4 T. Cremer, “The Religion Gap : Why Right-Wing Populists Underperform among

Christian Voters and what it means for the Role of the Church in Society,” LSE Global
Society Blog, December 20, 2018, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2018/
12/the-religion-gap-why-right-wing-populists-underperform-among-christian-voters-and-
what-this-means-for-the-role-of-the-church-in-society/; J. Martinez, G. Smith, “How
the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary Analysis,” Pew Research Center, November 9, 2016,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-prelim
inary-2016-analysis/.
5 J. Gerteis, A. Goolsby, “Nationalism in America: The Case of the Populist Movement,”
Theory and Society, 34:2, 2005, pp. 197–225.
262 CONCLUSION
populism is attached, typically nationalism or socialism. In any case, it is

a construction which is essentially homogeneous, introducing a de facto
exclusionary dimension, with outsiders perceived as a threat. Who this
“threatening other” is also varies according to the host ideology: it can
be immigrants for right-wing populists, or global economic forces for left-
wing populists.6 Populism therefore introduces a dichotomizing process,
with a polarizing effect, thereby re-politicizing the political space along
different lines and potentially new cleavages, such as globalization.7
The dualist view of the world inherent in populism, between an in-
group and an out-group, relies on an exclusionary mechanism which
can be further reinforced by the host ideology it is attached to (typi-
cally ethno-nationalism/nativism). This compounding effect reflects the
analogy of the underlying process at work, opposing “us” versus “them,”
and may lead to conflation between the features of populism and the
features of the host ideology. Studies which have explored the associa-
tion between populism and nativism/ethno-nationalism show that they
tend to reinforce each other in voters’ attitudes.8 This is especially true
for right-wing voters, yet Zhang and Bonikowski demonstrate that it is
not so much the result of pre-existing attitudes as of a pervading political
discourse “which has turned populism into a form of dog-whistle poli-
tics,” activating ethno-nationalist sentiment. However, this is not true for
left-wing voters, proving that populism is not inherently nativist even if
the two concepts are often associated, due to the enduring success of
right-wing populist parties. There is clearly a need for more data on voters
supporting left-wing populist parties, in order to identify the different
factors at work as well as their interaction.
Disentangling populism from its host ideology is therefore necessary
to properly assess the salience of the respective elements at play, yet fertil-
ization tends to show that they are often interrelated, working together
6 K. Sanders, M. Hurtado, M. Jesus, J. Zoragastua, “Populism and exclusionary narra-

tives: The ‘other’ in Podemos’ 2014 European Union election campaign,” European
Journal of Communication, 32:6, 2017, pp. 552–567.
7 H. Kriesi, E. Grande, R. Lachat, M. Dolezal, S. Bornschier, T. Frey, West European
Politics in the Age of Globalization, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
8 B. Bonikowski, Y. Zhang, “Populism as dog-whistle politics: anti-elite discourse and
sentiments toward minorities in the 2016 presidential election”, Working Paper, Harvard
University, 2017. Available at : https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bonikowski/files/boniko
wski_and_zhang_-_populism_as_dog-whistle_politics.pdf.
CONCLUSION 263
to reinforce one another. The British case is particularly instructive in this

respect: nationalism, Euroscepticism, and populism have been inextricably
linked together in the British context, well before the 2016 referendum,
which eventually resulted in the Brexit vote.
What also comes out of this edited volume is that the normative
debate on populism is still raging. The case-studies analyzed here show
that there is a strong reluctance to apply the populist label to left-wing
populists. Part of the problem seems to revolve around the notion of
“the people” inherent in the concept of populism, as it conflicts with
the left’s commitment to stand for the interests of the people. Left-wing
parties carry popular aspirations and grievances which are not intrinsically
populist. The populist label is seen as precluding political debate because
of the potential conflation between popular and populist, the latter being
regarded as derogatory, fundamentally delegitimizing popular demands.
This may well be amplified by decades of association between populism
and the radical right, as evidenced by the efficiency of dog-whistle tactics.
There seems to be no way out of this debate, which is in fact essentially
political.
Finally, the contributions presented in this volume tend to demon-
strate that the increasing popularity of right-wing populist forces across
Western Europe and the US is mainly due to the host ideology to which
it is attached, namely ethno-nationalism or nativism, which appears as
the main driver of electoral support for populist right-wing parties.9
This is corroborated by the lesser success enjoyed by left-wing populists.
However, this does not mean that populism itself, as a thin ideology,
should be dismissed as irrelevant in this continuous surge—quite the
contrary. It is indeed an essential ingredient of the winning formula10 of
right-wing populism: by reworking nativist ideas in a wider populist narra-
tive pitching the people against the elite, it makes nativist ideas acceptable
to a larger electoral basis, by reframing the terms of the political debate
as a whole. Mainstream right-wing parties have understood this perfectly
well, radicalizing their own positioning in an effort to counter the right-
wing populist’s encroachment of their political territory. This has resulted
9 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017, p. 77.

10 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis,
University of Michigan Press, 1995.
264 CONCLUSION
in a significant right-wing shift of the political debate and discourse on

immigration as a whole, thereby vindicating right-wing populist ideas,
and ultimately contributing to further challenging liberal democracy.

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The Faces of

ISBN 978-3-030-53888-0 ISBN 978-3-030-53889-7 (eBook)

every continent.3 Populist parties have gained considerable ground: in

3 C. Mudde, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Univer-

Successive Waves and Major Landmarks

applicability, as she herself later acknowledged,15 she already identified

draws from an increasingly wide range of manifestations and case studies

Aim(s) of the Book and Theoretical Framework

29 C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, P. Ostiguy, (eds.), The Oxford

35 S. M. Lipset, S. Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments:

a set of beliefs and practices, in an exclusive vision of Western/Christian

36 C. Mudde, C. Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford

The two following chapters investigate Donald Trump’s brand of

1 From UKIP to Brexit: The Right-Wing Populist

2 The Brexit Referendum: How Eurosceptic Populism

3 The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular Grievances 43

4 Is Podemos a Populist Party? an Analysis of Its

5 AfD and FPÖ: Rejection of Immigration—The Basis

6 Populism and Religion in the Lega’s Discourse

7 Populist Rhetorics: A Linguistic Analysis

8 Economic Populist Attitudes in Western Europe

9 Conservative Populism and the American Welfare

10 The Tea Party Movement in Pennsylvania: A New

11 Religion, a Significant Factor in Donald Trump’s

12 The Populist Challenge to Foreign Policy:

Emma Bell is Professor of British Politics at the Université de Savoie

Marie Gayte is Associate Professor of US Studies at Toulon University.

Luca Ozzano is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Univer-

Table 5.1 Right-Wing Extremism (NPD) opposed to the AfD

From UKIP to Brexit: The Right-Wing

For a long time, the UK was seen as an exception, as fundamentally

1 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, University

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1

was largely interpreted as a populist moment2 in a larger sequence of

UKIP’s Unprecedented Surge

5 H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, University

marginalizing far-right parties, by co-opting10 their traditional themes.

10 M. A. Schain, “The Extreme-Right and Immigration Policy-Making: Measuring

rather than invoking Britain’s presumed exceptionalism, it is more accu-

18 H. Kitschelt, op. cit., p. vii.

progressively morphed into a populist radical right discourse under Nigel

23 E. Ivarsflaten, “Reputational Shields: Why Most Anti-Immigrant Parties Failed in

the trappings of a radical right party.28 ” Although ethno-nationalism29 is

UKIP, Populism, and the Brexit Vote

28 M. Goodwin, J. Dennison, “The Radical Right in the United Kingdom”, J. Rydgren

moment,”32 in a larger sequence of events going beyond the UK’s own

32 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of

35 Dominic Cummings blog, https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-

thus be seen as an extension of the right-wing populist surge which had

Building on Rooduijn, the aim here is to try and disentangle populism

characterizing feature of the populist radical right. According to Mudde

52 C. Mudde, The Far Right in America, Routledge, 2017; M. Rooduijn, “State of

Harvard University, 2017. Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bonikowski/

demonstrated the intrinsically populist nature of British Euroscepticism.62

The Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Populism: The

This makes up the second phase in the process of radicalization of the

House of Commons reacted by passing a bill preventing a no-deal Brexit,

66 B. Johnson, Conservative party conference speech, 2 October 2019.

This significant populist turn by Boris Johnson’s party was confirmed

will: “Parliament must change so that we in parliament are working for