Seminar: Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right

Centar za radničke studije u Zagrebu organizira 18. i 19. studenog 2017. seminar o nacionalizmu, populizmu i novoj desnici (program i sažeci u nastavku).

 

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Seminar: Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right

Centre for Labour Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

November 18-19

 

MAZ, Pavla Hatza 16, Zagreb

 

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Schedule:

 

Saturday November 18

 

11.00-12.30 Joachim Becker: The different currents of the nationalist right

 

15.30-17.00 Jan Rettig: Nation trumps economy: Performance, interaction and impact of two discourse communities of far right parties across Europe

 

17.15-19.00 General discussion

 

 

Sunday November 19

 

11.00-12.30 Nikola Vukobratović: The rise of a nationalist Europe?: a Balkans perspective

 

15.30-17.00 Irena Pejić: The new far right in post-transitional Serbia

 

17.15-19.30 General discussion

 

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The political landscape of Europe (and beyond) in the years since the financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008 has been marked by the rise of right-wing forces. Public debates around astronomic public rescue packages for private financial institutions and the austerity measures accompanying them did, counter to what many on the left may have expected, not shift public opinion significantly towards left positions. Rather, it was often the populist right that proved increasingly successful in articulating economic and social anxieties into a discourse of conceptually vague anti-elitism combined with xenophobia, aggressive social chauvinism and – especially in the eastern parts of Europe – the reassertion of regressive social norms regarding women’s rights and the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities. The outbreak of the so-called “refugee crisis” strengthened this trend, effectively turning the crisis narrative into one of besieged national and cultural identities, threatened by the influx of foreign – predominantly Muslim – populations. The electoral successes of parties such as Front Nacional in France and AfD in Germany signify the increasing normalization of formerly fringe political options within the parliaments of central core countries of the EU.

 

Many on the left have interpreted these phenomena as symptoms of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. But even if we accept this as a broad diagnosis, the question remains as to why these reactions so often take such reactionary forms. Much like the rise of fascism in the interwar period, the current rise of right-wing forces presents a significant challenge to Marxist (or more broadly – materialist) approaches, insofar as these assert the explanatory centrality of class for social and political processes. Current political developments seem to once again drive home the fact that theoretical invocations of class as unifying social category do not necessarily correlate to a unifying experience of class subjects. The fact that the class experience of the crisis and its reverberations has proven to be fractured along “identitarian” fault lines or, at the very least, allowed its political articulation in divisive and deeply regressive terms presents both a theoretical and political challenge the left cannot afford to ignore. The challenge to theoretically come to terms with the rise of a new, aggressive right, entails the challenge of critically reassessing the explanatory instruments of the left, above all the question of the complex relation between structural factors, lived experience and political articulation.

 

With the seminar “Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right”, the Centre for Labour Studies wishes to facilitate debates on these and related matters in a regional context that is itself marked by the resurgence of aggressive right-wing forces. By providing a platform for critical debate between regional activists and theorists as well as relevant international scholars, we hope to contribute to a both theoretically and politically more adequate response to these worrying processes.

 

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Abstracts:

 

Joachim Becker: The different currents of the nationalist right

 

The nationalist right is not a monolithic bloc. It consists of different currents – a neoliberal, a national-conservative and a fascist current. The lecture will provide a typology for analysing the nationalist right. Against the background of a typology, a brief map of the main nationalist right-wing forces and their respective social base will be provided.

 

 

Jan Rettig: Nation trumps economy: Performance, interaction and impact of two discourse communities of far right parties across Europe

 

The European far right is, undoubtedly, on the rise. The most visible expressions are certainly the electoral victories of a plethora of far right parties in several national contexts. Also on the European level success increases, electorally and – probably paradoxically – in terms of cooperation. Currently, there are three far right euro-parties officially registered by the EU-authorities and partially funded by the EU-budget. Especially the many different forms of cooperation raise the questions what the conditions are that favour their cooperations and how they come to terms with each other ideologically.

The presentation will outline the meaning and impact of discourse communities encompassing several far right parties. This will be elaborated along two distinctive discourse communities: neoliberal political economy on the one hand and identitarian-essentialist nationalism on the other. I will show to what an extent ideological and programmatic discourse positions converge or diverge over time and if and how this is relevant for their mutual understanding and interaction. Finally, the issue of nationalism and its place in contemporary right-wing performance will be considered as a major factor in explaining the contemporary ‘popular appeal’ of far right parties.

 

 

Nikola Vukobratović: The rise of a nationalist Europe?: a Balkans perspective

 

In the early 1990s, the Balkans and especially former Yugoslavia have often been presented as a hotbed of ethnic nationalism and the far-right. As the rest of the continent was seemingly moving towards cosmopolitan unity, abandoning ethnic and national selfishness, as well as the false promises of ideology, the Balkans looked like an exception from the rule. The fall of Yugoslavia and the wars of its succession were interpreted as petty bickering of local tribes not yet fully integrated in the post-nationalist World. The solution was therefore sought in humanitarian interventions and (sometimes) forced processes of “Europeisation”. However, even before these processes were fully completed, nationalism started to look less as an atavism in the least developed parts of the continent, and more as a real danger in the very heart of Europe. Not just in the “more successful” post-socialist countries (Central Europe), but even in “Old Europe”, it was noticed that nationalism was once again taking center-stage. This new context presents a challenge of reinterpreting the role of nationalism in Europe, and especially in the periphery of the EU and the Balkans. What are the similarities and differences between nationalist politics and tendencies in the Balkans, Central Europe and the West? To which systemic contradictions are they trying to produce an answer to? And what are the possible democratic and socialist answers to it? These will be some of the questions raised in the presentation.

 

 

Irena Pejić: The new far right in post-transitional Serbia

 

The far right in Serbia, as in many other post-socialist and European countries after the fall of the Berlin wall, came out to the open. Keeping in mind the specific historical and local context of the rise of the right-wing forces in Serbia, one of the postsocialist Yugoslav successor states, the lecture will provide an analysis of the main catalysts in the ideological shaping of far right political organisations and movements. By reviewing the political changes since October 5th 2000 (the end of Milošević’s regime) and the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the lecture will try to map the changes within the far right, especially after the fragmentation of the largest right-wing party SRS and large parts of its membership and voters shifting towards the ruling party, which itself had shifted towards more “moderate” positions. The lecture will investigate how these developments influenced the fragmented “oppositional” right-wing forces, which now focused more on social issues, but articulated in a discourse of nationalism, xenophobia (especially in the time of the refugee crisis), rising racism toward the Roma population, and a general intolerance towards sexual and ethnic minorities and women’s rights.

 

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