Reports

There are numerous definitions of the notion of ‘Populism,’ a concept that is often difficult to capture.
In his review of Benjamin Moffit’s ‘Global rise of Populism’, Kaçar (2017) argues how the notion
of populism has changed over time, modifying its nature, contents and focal points, theorising
contemporary populism as a political style “encompassing an appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’,
‘bad manners’, and crisis, breakdown, or threat”.

In Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Cas Mudde defines populism as “the idea that society is
separated into two groups at odds with one another – “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite”
(Molloy, 2018). Mudde also reported that
most successful populists today are on the right, particularly the radical right […] Politicians like
Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Donald Trump in the US, combine populism
with [anti-immigrant] nativism and authoritarianism (Mudde as cited by Molloy, 2018).

The present report aspires to shed some light on the increasing connections between the global
phenomenon of populism and the spread of racist sentiments, stressing how these two phenomena often
go hand in hand. Again, Mudde’s conceptualisation of populism is helpful for a better understanding
of the relationship between populism and racism. The opposition between the “pure people” and
the “corrupt elite” is at the very basis of the common discontent that commonly affects a nation.

The discourses of populists lie around the presence of external or internal others who engage in the
plunging fortunes of the “honest people” (Rattansi, 2020). It is in this context that racism has its roots:
the idea that minorities, immigrants, refugees, economic migrants, or LGBTQIA+ communities are
behind a nation’s discontent, resulting in the creation of “policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in
a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”
(The Cambridge Dictionary).

After this brief introduction to the concept of populism and racism, the present report starts with the
regions of eastern and South-Eastern Europe, where the presence of populists and the spread of racism
is rooted in the history of the regions themselves, as they were divided into numerous multi-ethnic
empires. Later, the second section discusses Southern Europe, where the populist discourses of Italy
and Greece are explored in connection with the notion of racist behaviours. Section three sheds light on
South-Western Europe, where Spain and Portugal developed far-right populist factions very recently
– unlike other European countries that have had far-right parties since the 1980s. Afterwards, the
chapter on Western Europe explores the spreading of right-wing and populist governments amongst
countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The fifth
section investigates how central European countries such as Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic
– i.e.: post-communist areas) are witnessing significant levels of democratic backsliding, with many
attributing it to the spread of populism. Lastly, the report delves into the increase of populist as well as
racist tendencies in Northern Europe, with a particular focus on Finland, Sweden, and Norway.