Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Peter Učen: Approaching National Populism
Approaching National Populism popular interests as failing or even treacherous. Nationalism, then, was identified as a threat to certain ‘supranational’ tools envisaged as furtherance of the socio-economic development of European nations. In doing so, the mainstream intuited the two most serious challenges to their legitimacy. To sum up, except for being ‘the right’ - that means despising the idea that all people be equal as the result of the state intervention - the radical right also espoused nationalism and populism in their criticism of established actors, norm and ideas within European polities. Interpreting the political in terms of then national and juxtaposing the people and elite, the radical right posed a serious threat to the ‘regular’ way of doing politics in the societies at issue. Going back to the helpful concepts, in his important contribution Mudde (2007) draws a line between the radical and extreme parties (of the right) and defines the core ideology of the populist radical right. According to his argument, the populist radical right (PRR), being nominally democratic yet challenging some key elements of liberal democracy, such as constitutional protection of minorities, should be for the purposes of analysis segregated from the extreme (right) parties. The latter are known to attack the sancta sanctissima of democracy itself, its popular sovereignty heart. Not only PRR ought to be confused with the extreme right; it also belongs to the different class than the Right which is radical, but not populist. Finally, he provides arguments for treating differently also other populist parties which are not radical right. Regarding ideology, Mudde first defines PRR as a form of nationalism. Its essence is an expression of a nationalist persuasion called nativism. Then he identifies the ideological core of the PRR as a combination of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. Nativism stands for “an ideology, which holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (‘the nation’) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation state. The basis for defining (non-) ‘nativeness’ can be diverse, e.g. ethnic, racial or religious, but will always have a cultural component” (Mudde 2007, 19, original emphasis). Concept of nativism analytically covers nationalism, xenophobia, (and also racism, as nativism can, but need not, include the racist attitudes), antiimmigrant stances as well as the welfare chauvinism from the above list of traditional characteristics of the radical right. Hence, it is true essence of the PRR which therefore can be narrowly defined as the politics of nationalism.2 Another core ideological feature of PRR is authoritarianism understood as “the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of aut-15
