NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

anti-Semitic. 42 What makes populism really dangerous for democracy, however, is a consciousness that – to cite Mény and Surel again – it is an “empty” shell, which can be filled and made meaningful by whatever is poured into it. 43 The goals of populist leaders actually do not have to be that radical. Their decision to label a particular political party or political leader as “populist” depends on the chosen definition of populism. To start with, so-called populist does not have to have an anti-establishment attitude. On the contrary, populist leaders may even become part of the government. Jack Hayward convincingly uses the example of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She saw herself as an “outsider” who, despite being the leader of the Conservative Party, was opposed by the so-called elitists inside and beyond her party. In other words, she was seeking to break the stranglehold of interest groups, hostile institutions and entrenched practices. 44 Political leaders or parties often use populist rhetoric during the time of elections. Electoral opportunism leads some political leaders, despite being themselves representatives of the political elite, to criticise the government for being “too elitist”. 45 Even if populist political leaders become part of the government, they may maintain their stance of being in opposition to entities that somehow endanger their position or threaten the supposed interests of the citizens that the government represents. There is still a need for the construction of a homogeneous identity, as well as efforts to present the people as a supposed unit, not only internally, as united in their fight against corruption or the communist past, but also externally, to distinguish that unit from other peoples and nations. 46 “The people” may then used not just as an abstract phenomenon, but also as a community united by blood, common descent, language and culture. 47 42 E. Gellner, G. Ionesco (eds.), “Introduction”, Populism. Its Meaning and National Characteristics . (The Macmillan Company, 1969). 43 Y. Mény and Y. Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, Y. Mény, Y. Surel (eds.) Democracies and the Populist Challenge. (New York: Palgrave 2002), p. 6. 44 J. Hayward, “Populist Challenge to Elitist Democracy”, J. Hayward (ed . ) Elitism, Populism, and European Politics. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996). 45 Mény and Surel use the former French president Jacques Chirac as an example. See Y. Mény and Y. Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, Y. Mény, Y. Surel (eds.) Democracies and the Populist Challenge. (New York: Palgrave 2002). 46 See also F. Decker, “The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy”, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft 3/2003. 47 The latter concept prefers a traditionalist, organic view of the nation and contradicts the so called republican conception, which considers “the people” to be an abstract construction. See, for example, A. D. Smith Theories of Nationalism. (London: Duckworth, 1971) and B. Anderson Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 1991).

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