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POPULISM AND NATIONALISM VERSUS EUROPEANISM
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term, free trade and its expansion – both inher-
ent aspects of globalisation – mean prosperity,
growth and development for everyone.
Populism, the extreme right and
nationalism in Europe
The Great Recession, which has had an espe-
cially hard impact in Europe over the past dec-
ade, has left a legacy of mounting inequality,
employment insecurity and uncertainty about
the future and declining living standards and
prospects for broad swathes of society, particu-
larly middle class citizens whose social and eco-
nomic status has seriously deteriorated and low-
skilled workers. In other words, it has created a
fertile ground for the growth of extreme right-
wing parties quite similar to that which nour-
ished the rise of fascism in Europe in 1930s.
This situation is the consequence of a neolib-
eral economic system bent on growth and the
optimisation of profit margins at the expense of
equality and fair distribution that has no qualms
about undermining the European model of the
welfare state. The alt-right – the newest euphe-
mism for the extreme right – seeks to draw at-
tention away from this reality by casting the
blame for everything gone wrong on globalisa-
tion and advocating protectionism in the form
of a return to closed national borders as the
cure-all. It is easy to exploit people’s anxiety for
the future and rage triggered by exclusion and
convert them into animosity for the other –
which can be anyone viewed as being different
on the basis of his or her religion, language, skin
colour or ideology. If to the consequences of the
economic crisis we add a massive influx of mi-
grants perceived by the most disadvantaged
strata of society as an unbearable source of com-
petition for jobs and social services and terrorist
attacks that provoke a heightened sensation of
insecurity, we have all the ingredients of a per-
fect storm.
Populists purport to be the voice of the peo-
ple whose mission is to point out the differences
between the interests of the public and those of
traditional politicians on the right and the left
alike. Behind this benevolent facade, however,
lies a conscious attempt to play on the public’s
fear, rage and anxiety, circulate falsehoods and
exploit collective emotions to achieve their own
political ends. What sets them apart from other
politicians (who from the beginning of time
have been guilty of such behaviour at one point
or another in their careers) is their habit of do-
ing it on a systematic basis. Political populists
indulge in demagoguery and tell people what
they want to hear even when perfectly aware
that it is false. They pitch simple solutions for
complex problems they know are unviable and
coyly present themselves as alternatives to other
politicians (who they refer to as the elite and
blame for all of society’s ills) even though their
objective is to wield the power they claim to
distain. Populists distrust the media but attempt
to use them to their own ends.
Extreme right-wing populism, the most
widespread and pernicious form, is also ultrana-
tionalist, anti-European, identitarian, exclusion-
ary and xenophobic. Its primary scapegoat is the
immigrant, who it blames for all of society’s
problems including terrorist attacks regardless
of the fact that the majority of those who have
perpetrated terrorist attacks in Europe have
been born there. The parallels between today’s
extreme right-wing populists and the fascist
movements of the twentieth century are clear,
the only distinction between them being a shift
from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia. The demo-
graphic targets of these groups have not
changed: they continue to be impoverished