On February 12 2020, the Senate chamber of the Italian Parliament approved the go-ahead to revoke parliamentary immunity for the former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini – leader of the Italian populist radical-right League – in order to be tried on the Gregoretti case. Matteo Salivini is accused for abuse of power and for kidnapping 135… Continue reading “Is Italian right-wing populism in decline?”
Is it reasonable to expect that the radical populist right is going to make somewhat of a comeback after the CoVid-19 crisis has passed? For those of us who have been following the radical populist right over the past couple of decades, one of the central questions today is whether the radical populist right is… Continue reading “Will France’s Marine Le Pen be a profiteer or victim of the pandemic?”
In Spain, two sides have emerged: traitors vs. patriots. This division is the last thing the country needs right now. The arrival of Podemos and VOX on the Spanish political scene not only meant that voters had new electoral options. It also led to a new, groundbreaking style that was a change from the stereotypical,… Continue reading “The Tale of the Two Spains”
German far-right responses to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal their lack of social responsibility. As the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting public life across the globe, the far-right “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident” (PEGIDA) which emerged from the eastern German city of Dresden has difficulties to conform with the new safety and health regulations.… Continue reading “Germany: is the COVID-19 pandemic weakening the far right?”
In late 2018, a majority of Brazilians elected Jair Bolsonaro president of the republic. By now, they probably wished they had never heard of him. In the current coronavirus crisis, Bolsonaro has joined the gallery of toxic leaders, in line with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Unlike the latter, Bolsonaro seems completely immune to any… Continue reading “Coronavirus-19’s victims: Populism”
What is ‘Syncretism’? ‘Syncretism’, also known as “Catch-all Populism” in the academic literature, is an ambiguous term that has often been applied to political parties that are ideologically centrist and have a loose, flexible ideology. ‘Syncretic’ political parties often have ambiguous ideological stances on the left-right ideological dimension. Compared to other types of party families in… Continue reading “‘Syncretic’ Populism in Contemporary 21st Century European Politics”
In the last month, European countries witnessed a series of events that reinforce the surge of radical and extreme right movements, such as the rise of Vox as the third political force in Spain, the independence march of nationalism in Poland, or recent Italian polls predicting that radical right parties might reach 51.5% in the… Continue reading “The Role of Sovereignism for European Radical/Extreme Right Parties”
Much has been written about the development of the personalities and other psychological characteristics of Alt-Right/far-right leaders such as Donald Trump (e.g. authors in Cruz and Buser, 2017; Waring & Paxton, 2019) and of violent far-right extremists – such as Anders Breivik, Thomas Mair, and Darren Osborne (e.g. Jackson (2019), Melle (2013), Turner-Graham (2019a), and… Continue reading “Jekyll-and-Hyde: What Creates a Far-Right Supporter? Part 1.”
It is more than 8 years since the massacre at Utøya and this year many local authorities ‘forgot’ to mark the 8th anniversary of the Utøya and Olso terror attacks, maybe because they were busy with the local elections. In the meantime, survivors continued to receive death threats and the political assault has still not… Continue reading “Frp in Norway – the end of the party?”
Matteo Salvini’s League party takes advantage of the frustration felt by Italians living in poverty to fuel xenophobia and hatred toward immigrants. Since Matteo Salvini took over the leadership of the Northern League party (rebranded as the League before last year’s elections) in late 2013, the focus of his harsh political campaigns shifted from southern… Continue reading “Italian Populists Use Social Welfare to Ignite a “War Between the Poor””