Photo: Dreamstime.

COP30: The Spaceship Is on Fire

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

In her sharp analysis of the COP30 summit, Dr. Heidi Hart, an environmental humanities researcher and guest instructor at Linnaeus University in Sweden, captures the surreal moment when an exhibition pavilion in Belém caught fire—an unsettling metaphor for a world already burning. Despite tense negotiations and an extra day of talks, petrostates secured a final text that completely omitted fossil fuels, leaving UN Secretary-General Guterres to warn of a widening gap between science and policy. Dr. Hart situates this failure within a shifting global landscape marked by illiberal regimes, climate denial, and powerful petro-interests. With geopolitical turmoil and corporate greenwashing shaping outcomes, her commentary underscores a stark truth: on a “spaceship” with finite resources, political paralysis is accelerating us toward irreversible tipping points.

By Heidi Hart

The defining image of the COP30 climate summit flashed around the world: fire in an exhibition pavilion at the meeting site in Belém, Brazil, flames spreading up the tent’s walls and forcing evacuations. No one was injured beyond smoke inhalation, but the “world is on fire” adage took a literal turn as delegates wrestled to find consensus. The summit spilled over into an extra day, with a win for petrostates like Saudi Arabia, as the final agreement ceded more funding to at-risk countries but failed to include any language about fossil fuels. 

On Saturday, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced a forthcoming “side-text” about fossil fuels and forest protections, also a hot topic among Indigenous protesters who had pressed into the secure COP “Blue Zone” on Friday evening. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ assessment after the summit was grim, despite acknowledging some progress on “adaptation” funds: “The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide … The reality of overshoot is a stark warning: we are approaching dangerous and irreversible tipping points.” The lack of even a mention of fossil fuels in the final agreement, let alone the “deep, rapid emission cuts” Guterres acknowledges are necessary to keep the planet below overshoot carbon levels, is not just the result of Saudi and Russian delegates’ bully tactics (Al Gore has referred to the agreement as an “Opec text”) but also a symptom of profoundly shifting political realities around the world. 

The notable absence of US delegates, while the Trump administration slashed environmental protections at home, was the source of relief for some at the summit but also pointed to the normalization of climate denial amid illiberal regimes’ growing influence and far-right pressures in green-aspirational countries like Germany. Even Norway, known for its own sustainable, egalitarian culture, has no plans to sacrifice its oil wealth for the larger planetary good. Meanwhile, costly wars and deep political divisions in countries like the US and Brazil distract from efforts to forge coherent climate policy. Finally, the sheer scale of petrostates’ and billionaire technocrats’ influence cannot be overstated in watering down and even – in this case – completely avoiding action on carbon emissions cuts. Bill Gates’ recent essay diminishing the dangers of climate emergency has not helped; though “civilization” will likely not be wiped out in a sci-fi doomsday scenario, the suffering of millions and the loss of innumerable nonhuman species are hardly points to be glossed over in the name of “innovation.” Neoliberal optimism sounds increasingly tone-deaf in a time when the limits of human progress are becoming palpably clear around the world. 

The idea of “Spaceship Earth,” popularized by Buckminster Fuller in the late 1970s, portrays the planet as a closed system with limited resources. Though this idea has informed many efforts toward more sustainable living, greenwashing for the sake of profit has become the norm among large corporations. The comforts of petrocultures, the material, cultural, and economic manifestations of decades of cheap oil, are so embedded in privileged countries, there are limits, too, to how much individuals can do to shrink their carbon footprints. 

On the political level, Saudi and Russian influence is only one part of the picture; lack of concern or climate denialism (often cast as denial of the human cause) is growing in countries like Indonesia, Mexico, India, and Australia, places where the risks from global heating are high. In the formerly stable if systemically inequitable US, the lurch toward anti-science authoritarianism has been so swift as to induce a kind of vertigo. In his recent book Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, Roy Scranton writes, “We can recognize the Earth as a closed system in which we all depend on each other, but the political reality within that system resembles gang warfare more than it does a unified crew,” (91). The deep lack of consensus at COP30, when the risks of climate collapse are clearer than ever, shows how much more difficult the problem is to address in today’s chaotic political landscape.

Nearly ten years ago, in her essay “What Is the Anthro-political?”, culture theorist Claire Colebrook engaged with the already contested Anthropocene term to argue that, in light of ecological destruction, “the political” as a norm can no longer be taken for granted. This provocative stance is worth revisiting today. Especially with the rise of populist tendencies that tap into human “affect and corporeality,” the political no longer appears as a regulating modality of human-being but rather as a contingent aspect of human culture that, once that culture destroys its own “milieu” or literal environment, will go down with it. In Colebrook’s more elegant terms, “What if what we know as politics … were possible only in a brief era of the taming of human history?” (115). 

This geologic-scale perspective on last week’s pitting of the EU’s and other climate-sympathetic delegates against fossil-friendly regimes (with the absent US in the background noise) does not diminish the stakes at COP30 but shows how vast and planetary those stakes are. With our closed system threatening to burn beyond livable thresholds, the responsibility of one global gathering to stave off one local disaster after another becomes painfully clear. 

Professor Barry Sullivan is the Raymond and Mary Simon Chair in Constitutional Law and the George Anastaplo Professor of Constitutional Law and History at Loyola University.

Professor Sullivan: The Separation of Powers in the US Does Not Function as the Framers Anticipated

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In a penetrating interview with ECPS, Professor Barry Sullivan warns that “the separation of powers does not function as the Framers anticipated,” offering one of the starkest legal assessments yet of America’s constitutional crisis. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States, he argues that “the constitutional doctrine and the man have met the moment,” producing a presidency with “virtually total control, without suffering any consequences.” Sullivan traces this shift to a revival of a “Nixonian” view of executive authority—summarized in Nixon’s infamous claim, “If the President does it, it is not illegal.” Such developments, he cautions, create “enclaves of unaccountable power” and dramatically heighten the risk of democratic backsliding, especially amid polarized parties and eroding constitutional conventions. 

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a wide-ranging and incisive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Barry Sullivan—the Raymond and Mary Simon Chair in Constitutional Law and the George Anastaplo Professor of Constitutional Law and History at Loyola University—offers one of the most sobering legal assessments to date of the United States’ ongoing constitutional transformation. As he warns, “the separation of powers does not function as the Framers anticipated,” and the consequences for American democracy are profound.

Speaking against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Trump v. United States, Professor Sullivan argues that “the constitutional doctrine and the man have met the moment.” Over the last fifteen years, the Supreme Court has steadily expanded presidential authority, culminating in an immunity doctrine that grants the President “virtually total control, without suffering any consequences.” This shift, Professor Sullivan notes, aligns disturbingly well with Donald Trump’s populist narrative of a personalized leader whose will supersedes institutional constraint.

Calling this new jurisprudence a revival of a “Nixonian” conception of executive power, Professor Sullivan underscores the danger. If the Court has effectively embraced the claim that “if the President does it, it is not illegal,” then the risk of democratic backsliding—especially when paired with the pardon power—becomes “very great.” This combination, he stresses, allows a President not only to immunize himself but “in effect, to grant immunity to those whose efforts on his behalf he needs,” creating what constitutional theorists call enclaves of unaccountable authority.

Throughout the interview, Professor Sullivan situates these developments within broader populist dynamics: the weaponization of “retribution” narratives, the erosion of constitutional conventions, and the increasing collapse of the administrative state under a muscular unitary executive model. His warning is stark: under the Court’s interpretation, the President possesses “virtually unlimited power,” and recent behavior shows “there is nothing that is too great or too small to capture his imagination,” from foreign policy decisions to symbolic renovations of federal buildings.

Crucially, Professor Sullivan emphasizes that the Framers never anticipated the rise of disciplined, polarized political parties—developments that have hollowed out checks and balances. As he notes, the Founders “would be absolutely aghast” at how party alignment now disables Congress and the courts from restraining executive overreach.

Finally, Professor Sullivan stresses that reversing democratic backsliding will require not only judicial recalibration but also broader political and civic reform. The core problem, he argues, is “not a constitutional problem but a political problem” rooted in polarization, unified government, and the abandonment of institutional good faith.

This interview offers an essential window into how constitutional design, judicial interpretation, and populist leadership together shape the current crisis of American democracy.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Barry Sullivan, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

This Is Not How the Framers Envisioned Executive Power

Frontal view of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2024. Photo: Gualberto Becerra P.

Professor Barry Sullivan, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In “Trump’s Court, Nixon’s Constitution,” you argue that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling represents a profound judicial reimagining of the presidency. How does this expanding conception of presidential immunity—articulated in Trump v. United States—intersect with Donald Trump’s populist vision of a personalized, extra-legal leader whose “will” is portrayed as overriding institutional and constitutional constraints?

Professor Barry Sullivan: I think that the constitutional doctrine and the man have met the moment. For the last 15 years, the Supreme Court has been expanding the constitutional power of the presidency vis-à-vis the other branches of government. And with the immunity the President now has, along with the power to pardon those who assist him in the work of government—even if they commit crimes on his behalf—he has virtually total control without suffering any consequences.

The expansion of executive power has been justified, in part, by the idea that the primary check on the President is Congress’s impeachment power. But if we consider the current situation, where both of the politically accountable branches of government are in the hands of the same party—and where that party is tightly structured, not a broad ideological tent but one very much aligned with the President—then the President effectively has near-total control. The separation of powers simply does not function as the Framers anticipated.

So, given the proclivities of the President and the latitude the Court has now provided, the President possesses extraordinarily broad powers at this moment.

Trump Now Holds Power Nixon Could Only Claim

To what extent does the Court’s new approach to presidential immunity signal a structural shift toward what you describe as a “Nixonian” theory of constitutional authority, and how might that shift accelerate democratic backsliding in the US?

Professor Barry Sullivan: The Nixonian theory of the presidency was articulated by President Nixon at the time of Watergate, when he instructed his lawyer, who was arguing in the Supreme Court on his behalf, to tell the Court that the President of the United States had all the power of Louis XIV, except for four years at a time. In other words, there was no check on the President except re-election. He further stated, after he left the presidency, in an interview with David Frost, that if the President does it, it is not illegal—meaning it is legal simply because the President does it.

So, if I’m correct that the decision in Trump v. United States gives the President power similar to the power that Nixon claimed—which I believe it does—then the opportunity for democratic backsliding is very great. And when you combine the President’s very broad powers with the pardon power—which allows him not only to be immune himself but, in effect, to grant immunity to those whose efforts on his behalf he needs in order to do what he wants to do—the risks become even more significant.

Populist leaders often frame legal accountability as partisan persecution. How do judicially expanded immunity doctrines reshape the balance between democratic legitimacy and the rule of law—especially in the face of populist claims to majoritarian or plebiscitary authority?

Professor Barry Sullivan: That’s an interesting question. I think that the President—speaking in terms of populism—repeatedly used the expression in his last campaign for the presidency, “I am your justice, I am your retribution.” And he didn’t say retribution for what or against whom, but I think it was pretty clear that he was suggesting that he had been persecuted during the four years he was out of office, and that he had been persecuted on behalf of his supporters. So, when he returned to power in January of this year, one of the first things he did was to pardon all the people who had been involved in the January 6th invasion of the Capitol.

The Framers Would Be Absolutely Aghast

Mount Rushmore National Memorial featuring Roosevelt, Jefferson, and George Washington — the Founding Fathers carved in granite. Photo: Dreamstime.

Does the Court’s emerging immunity jurisprudence risk creating what constitutional theorists describe as “enclaves of unaccountable power?” In your view, how would the Framers—particularly those most concerned about executive aggrandizement, such as Madison and Wilson—have understood a doctrine that shields a president from criminal liability for “official acts”?

Professor Barry Sullivan: This opinion—unless it is substantially narrowed in the future by the Court, which of course is possible—but as it stands now, does create an enclave of unaccountable power. We’ve seen the use of that power in many ways over the last, well, almost a year now.

What would the Framers have thought of it? I think the Framers would be absolutely aghast that the constitutional structure they created was susceptible to this kind of democratic—or Republican, they would say—erosion. The Framers put a great deal of faith in the structure of government: the separation of powers and the checks and balances they built in. And we’ve seen that those checks and balances don’t work in the way they anticipated.

One thing the Framers did not foresee, of course, was the rise of political parties. They thought that political parties—standing parties, not just temporary coalitions of interests—were a bad thing, and that the United States could function without them. That turned out to be wrong. By the end of President Washington’s time in office, political parties had already begun to form.

Over time, parties became more ideologically coherent—really in the last 40 or 50 years—so that you no longer had a broad range of views within the Democratic or Republican parties. The parties became more unitary, in a sense. I think this is something the Founders didn’t anticipate and—if they were around today—would want to address, because the development of strong, ideologically unified parties means the system of checks and balances and the separation of powers simply doesn’t work the way they intended it to.

Independent Agencies No Longer Independent

Your work on “Expert Knowledge, Democratic Accountability, and the Unitary Executive” highlights tensions between technocratic governance and populist distrust of expertise. How does the Court’s embrace of a muscular unitary executive model empower populist presidents to override scientific, technical, or bureaucratic judgment?

Professor Barry Sullivan: I think it does, in the sense that the unitary executive theory—as the Court has interpreted it—means that the President has absolute control over the executive branch. Moreover, the President must have control over all those who exercise executive power in some sense. So, if we assume, as I think we should, that independent agencies exercise executive power in some sense, then the President has the power to overrule whatever an independent agency decides.

We created independent agencies—and they’ve been around since the beginning of the Republic, although they became more important in the 20th century, especially with the New Deal—because we thought there were some areas of governance that shouldn’t be totally dependent on the political will of the President.

To the extent that the Court has now said the President should have power over these agencies—and we’ll probably see before the end of this term how far the Court will go, because there are a couple of pending cases about the President’s removal power over members of these agencies—the President has the ability to dictate what independent agencies or departments of government do, down to the smallest detail. And that is a problem for scientific and other forms of expertise.

We saw in the first Trump administration—and I detailed this in that article—that the weekly morbidity and mortality report the government publishes, which has long been considered the gold standard for reporting on health in the United States and was largely immune from political oversight, had been the domain of medical scientists. During the pandemic, however, non-scientifically trained people were given the opportunity to edit that report, not to reflect the latest scientific evidence but to mirror the President’s political strategy and political interests. And if the Court is truly going to say that the President has that power, then that’s very dangerous for the credibility of supposedly expert determinations by the government.

Policy Was Sold as Science And That Undermined Trust

Coronavirus pandemic in the United States — New Yorkers on the streets of NYC. Photo: Dreamstime.

During the pandemic, you emphasize failures not only of political leadership but also of scientific bureaucracy. How do these failures complicate the conventional narrative that populist erosion is purely anti-expert, and what constitutional reforms might restore calibrated relationships between science and law?

Professor Barry Sullivan: During the pandemic, there were policy determinations that were made by medical experts, but the reasons for some of those determinations—or the real reasons—were not made public. For example, there was a determination by the government that people shouldn’t wear masks at the beginning of the pandemic. It turned out that this really wasn’t based on scientific evidence; it was based on the fact that there weren’t enough masks to go around. The medical authorities decided that priority should be given to medical personnel. So, in a sense, maybe that was the right decision from a policy point of view, but we were being told that it was a medical determination, not a policy determination.

I think those kinds of situations reflected badly on the scientists involved. And these questions of what proper policy is and what is good science, to a large extent, overlap. We have to be told to what extent one or the other is being relied on. I think that’s important. I’m not sure that it is, by itself, a constitutional problem, but it is certainly a legal and administrative law problem—making sure that we separate those things to the extent that they can be separated.

Not Just Law but Good Faith: What’s Disappearing in American Governance

In the landscape of democratic backsliding, how does the Supreme Court’s revival of the unitary executive—combined with skepticism toward independent agencies—reshape the administrative state’s ability to resist authoritarian tendencies?

Professor Barry Sullivan: That’s a wonderful question. I would add to that picture, or to the hypothetical, the fact that the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches also is not working.

But the unitary executive, combined with skepticism about administrative or independent agencies, certainly has an impact on the government’s overall ability to withstand authoritarian tendencies. Under the unitary executive theory, the President has virtually unlimited power. And this President has demonstrated an incredible amount of energy. There is nothing that is too great or too small to capture his imagination—whether it is deciding that we need to go to war, in effect, against Venezuela; subsidizing the friendly government in Argentina; painting the Executive Office Building white because he doesn’t like the natural gray color of the stone; or tearing down the East Wing of the White House. There’s virtually nothing to stop him.

Moreover, I would add to that the erosion we’ve seen in what I would call constitutional conventions—not necessarily law, at least in the sense of hard law, but soft law. The idea that there are some things the President could legally do but that would not be within the spirit of the law. I liken constitutional conventions to the ligaments and muscles that propel us, in addition to bones. We can’t run with bones alone; we need these other things. And just as the rule of law doesn’t depend exclusively on law, it also depends on a spirit of good faith and fair dealing that characterizes the relationships among the branches of government.

When Transparency Fails, Authoritarianism Flourishes

US President Donald Trump speaks at a White House press briefing after a Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 near DCA Airport in Washington on January 30, 2025. Photo: Joshua Sukoff.

Drawing on “Executive Secrecy,” how do secrecy practices, especially when coupled with expanded presidential immunity, contribute to the erosion of public accountability and provide fertile ground for authoritarian-style governance?

Professor Barry Sullivan: I’ve written extensively on the need in a democratic society for access to government information. I think that access to government information is absolutely critical to any kind of citizenship, or citizen oversight of government.

I gave a lecture a couple of years ago in Bayreuth, and I put up on the board a drawing of the three branches of government—each in its own little box—and then I drew a big box around those three boxes. The big box was meant to represent the people. It’s ultimately the people who have responsibility for government. Without information, the people cannot monitor the government in the way that Madison, in particular, anticipated they would and should in order to sustain a democratic government.

Populist leaders frequently weaponize secrecy, disinformation, and institutional opacity. How should courts conceptualize transparency obligations in an era where executive power is increasingly asserted as a personal mandate rather than an institutional responsibility?

Professor Barry Sullivan: As a general principle, the courts have to insist that executive power must be exercised as an instrument of institutional responsibility rather than as a personal mandate. I think that is one of the essential duties of a constitutional court in a constitutional system: to maintain—or to ensure—that the government acts truthfully and does not wield executive power for personal purposes or personal benefit, but rather fulfills its institutional responsibilities.

Opaque Courts Feed Populist Distrust

In “The Supreme Court and the People,” you stress the Court’s communication failures. How does the persistence of opaque, fractured, and elite-oriented judicial writing exacerbate the populist narrative that courts are disconnected from “the people,” and what risks does this pose for judicial legitimacy?

Professor Barry Sullivan: In that article, my co-author and I compared the way in which the Supreme Court of the United States communicates its decisions to the public. And the article is a little dated at this point because, in addition to what we perceived as the Court’s problems at the time—namely that it didn’t provide meaningful press access or user-friendly summaries of its opinions—we’ve also seen, in the last year or so, the Court increasingly issue decisions in emergency situations without the normal process of adjudication: without extensive briefing, without time for deliberation, and often without any explanation at all. I think this shift toward deciding many important issues in such a summary way—with the justices given little opportunity to do anything other than rely on their predispositions—is problematic from the standpoint of judicial legitimacy.

Justice Robert Jackson, one of the great justices of the Court and the lead US prosecutor at Nuremberg after the Second World War, once said that the door you enter by often determines the door you leave by. In other words, if judges bring certain predispositions into a case, those predispositions often shape the outcome unless a robust adjudicative process intervenes. The normal process of adjudication does everything possible to counteract that tendency. But when judges must decide cases based on very little briefing, a thin record, minimal deliberation, and limited discussion among the justices about what the outcome should be and why, then the likelihood increases that the door you enter by will indeed be the door you exit by.

Canada and Germany Show How Courts Can Reconnect with the Public

Given comparative examples such as Canada or Germany, how might improved judicial communication practices help inoculate the Court against populist attacks that portray it as unaccountable or politically captured?

Professor Barry Sullivan: I think this goes back to my last answer about the way in which the Court has started to decide really important questions summarily. But in addition to that, these other courts have taken steps with respect to the ordinary docket—the ordinary cases—to make sure that the people are given the means to understand what the Court has decided and why. For example, in Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada has created a position, usually held by a law professor, who is available to speak with the press on the day decisions are issued, to advise them about the meaning of the decisions, and to answer their questions.

Moreover, in Germany, there is a similar procedure—a lockup—where reporters who follow the Court are given the opportunity to review the opinion before it is officially released, so that they can be more mindful in the way they discuss it for the public. I think there is a recognition in both Canada and Germany that the press has an important role to play, because most people learn about Supreme Court decisions not from reading the decisions themselves but from reading what reporters say about them.

So, it isn’t just the length or complexity of the opinion. In Germany, the opinions are perhaps even more complex and lengthy than in the US, but other mechanisms exist to provide information to the public about the significance, importance, and meaning of the opinion.

Reversing Backsliding Requires Fixing Congress, Not Just the Court

Trump supporters marched toward Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., USA. Photo: Dreamstime / © Bgrocker

And lastly, Professor Sullivan, across your writings, there is a through-line stressing how institutional arrangements can unwittingly facilitate populist or authoritarian trajectories. What combination of judicial, legislative, and civic reforms do you believe is most essential for reversing democratic backsliding in the US, particularly in a context where the Court itself is increasingly central to the transformation?

Professor Barry Sullivan: Obviously, a difficult situation. Given the fact that, as you say, the Court has been central to the creation of the problem through this unitary executive theory, I’m not sure how much hope we should hold out that the Court is going to back off of the unitary executive theory. And it’s really a product of the last 20 years. It’s a product of the Roberts Court.

The unitary executive theory really came into prominence during the Reagan administration. Obviously, the seeds of it were sown in the Nixon years because of Nixon’s views of the power of the President. But as a constitutional theory, it really came into its own during the Reagan administration, and Attorney General Meese, in particular, furthered this theory.

I don’t think it is really based in the founding; I think it is principally based in the reaction that some people in government had to the reform measures introduced to limit executive power after the Nixon–Watergate scandal. And virtually from the time of the Ford administration—Ford was Nixon’s last vice president and succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned—President Ford kept on many of Nixon’s advisors during his term in office. Many of those advisors, from the beginning, thought that Congress was taking too much power away from the President.

So, this unitary executive theory saw its genesis then and really came into its own in the Reagan administration. But it did not capture the imagination of the Court as late as 1988, in a case called Morrison v. Olson, where the unitary executive theory was being advanced as a way of concentrating power in the presidency. The Court rejected it. There was only one vote in favor of the unitary executive theory, and that was Justice Scalia, who was one of the people in the Ford administration who thought that Congress had gone too far in reforming the presidency.

But once Justice Roberts became Chief Justice, and a group of people joined the Court—Justice Alito, for example, and Justice Thomas—who were very influenced by that theory as young lawyers, we see by this year a complete turnaround on the Court, so that what was essentially a marginal theory in 1988 has now become the majority theory.

As I say, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the Court changing its mind about that in the near future. Clearly, if we had a Democratic president, and that president made nominations to the Court, perhaps that theory wouldn’t be quite so popular in the Court.

I think the real problem is not a constitutional problem but a political problem: having a unified government, and the separation of powers not working the way the Framers intended because political parties have become extremely polarized. Members of Congress are putting party affiliation above all other affiliations in terms of their governmental duties. And until we can have a more balanced Congress, I think we’re not going to see a lot of progress.

Now, one thing that we need to talk about before we end is the fact that President Trump has managed to persuade people that he won by a landslide. In fact, he won with less than 50% of the vote. Yet, he has been acting as if he did win in a landslide. And, in a sense, he did—but only because he controls Congress as well as the presidency.

Polling officials open ballot boxes and begin counting votes during the November 19, 2017 presidential and parliamentary elections in Chillán, Chile. Photo: Marcelo Vildósola Garrigó.

Professor Navia: Chileans Vote For Radicals, but Expect Moderate Governance

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In an interview with the ECPS, Professor Patricio Navia underscores a defining paradox of Chile’s 2025 election: “Chileans ended up voting for two radical candidates in the first round, but they want them to govern as moderates.” He stresses that the apparent right-wing surge is less ideological than punitive, describing the first round as “a punishment vote against the left-wing ruling party.” Professor Navia highlights how insecurity reshaped the campaign, noting that the right “successfully turned the migration issue into an issue of insecurity and crime,” yet simultaneously embraced moderate positions on social rights. While Kast’s discourse may appear Trumpian, Professor Navia cautions that “Trump is a protectionist; Kast is a free-market advocate.” Ultimately, he argues, Chileans remain centrist in expectations: “They expect those candidates to govern as moderates.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Patricio Navia — Full Professor of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University — offers a penetrating analysis of Chile’s 2025 presidential election, an election defined, paradoxically, by radical electoral choices and enduring moderate expectations. As Professor Navia succinctly puts it, “Chileans ended up voting for two radical candidates in the first round, but they want them to govern as moderates.” This apparent contradiction lies at the heart of his interpretation of Chile’s shifting political dynamics, voter psychology, and institutional constraints.

Professor Navia begins by challenging simplified readings of the first-round results. While over 70% of voters opted for right-wing presidential candidates, he warns that this does not signal a deep ideological realignment. Rather, it reflects what he calls “a punishment vote against the left-wing ruling party,” noting that legislative voting patterns remained more balanced. This reflects a chronic feature of Chilean politics: electorates punish incumbents but do not necessarily embrace the ideological alternatives they vote for.

A central axis of Professor Navia’s argument is the politicization of insecurity. The right has, in his words, “successfully turned the migration issue into an issue of insecurity and crime,” capitalizing on fears that have intensified alongside Chile’s unprecedented migration influx. Yet even here, the story is not one of unbounded radicalization. Professor Navia notes that right-wing candidates simultaneously “promised to keep the social rights and the growing welfare system” and signaled restraint on moral issues—evidence of a moderated right adapting to a centrist electorate.

In discussing José Antonio Kast’s rise, Professor Navia cautions against superficial comparisons to Donald Trump. “Trump is a protectionist; Kast is a free-market advocate,” he argues, stressing both the distinct historical context of Chilean immigration and the ways Kast has fused crime-control narratives with nativist appeals. Still, he highlights the limits of this strategy: policy promises such as deporting large numbers of undocumented migrants are unrealistic and risk generating “discontent against this government that promised easy solutions.”

Crucially, Professor Navia emphasizes the resilience of Chile’s institutions. Despite concerns about authoritarian drift, he argues that “Congress will curtail the president significantly,” given its growing assertiveness and Kast’s lack of a congressional majority. For that reason, he sees no scenario in which Kast successfully expands executive power or revives Pinochet-era nostalgia: “If he says Pinochet was good, then he’s going to lose popular support.”

Ultimately, Professor Navia’s analysis underscores the stability of Chile’s political center—less visible electorally, but palpable in voter expectations. Voters may choose radicals, he argues, but “they expect those candidates to govern as moderates.” This tension will shape not only a Kast administration but the trajectory of Chilean politics in the years ahead.

Professor Patricio Navia is a Full Professor of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Patricio Navia, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Punishment Vote, Not Ideological Shift

Professor Patricio Navia, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Given that the combined vote for right-wing candidates exceeded 70% in the first round, how do you analyze the process of vote consolidation behind José Antonio Kast in the runoff, and what does this transference suggest about the strategic flexibility and ideological cohesion of the right-wing bloc in Chile’s two-round system?

Professor Patricio Navia: If we look at the presidential election, there is clearly a punishment vote against the left-wing ruling party or ruling coalition government of President Gabriel Boric. And if we look at the legislative election results, we see that candidates from left-wing parties performed better than the presidential candidates of the same coalition. So, while it is true that 70% of voters in the presidential election supported a right-wing candidate, the picture is more nuanced in the legislative vote, where left-wing candidates did better. This suggests that many voters chose a left-wing legislative candidate and a centrist or right-wing presidential candidate. Now, among the right-wing presidential contenders, only three explicitly defined themselves as right-wing. But there was another candidate, Franco Parisi, who ended up in third place. He campaigned as an opposition figure but also actively criticized the right-wing candidates. He attempted to position himself as a centrist opposition alternative. So, in that sense, I would qualify the idea that right-wing candidates collectively received 70% of the vote.

Crime Politics Eclipse Social Rights

Your work has explored the powerful role of the perception of insecurity on vote choice. To what extent has the political salience of crime and immigration, which the far right has successfully framed as a crisis, fundamentally eclipsed the progressive, social-rights agenda that characterized the recent elections and the ‘estallido social’?

Professor Patricio Navia: The right tends to do better whenever the main issue is insecurity and crime, and the right has successfully turned the migration issue into an issue of insecurity and crime. Migration used to be more of a labor issue, and it has now become an issue of crime. So, migration and crime go together. And that favors the right, which usually campaigns on Iron Fist, law-and-order policies, and that tends to attract more voters under those conditions.

But I would underline the fact that right-wing candidates made sure that, in their campaign, they also promised to keep the social rights and the growing welfare system that Chile has created over the past few years. Even on moral issues, right-wing candidates were very careful to commit themselves—and to signal clearly—that they would not change existing legislation on women’s access to abortion, for example. So, we do see a shift to the right, but that shift is moderated by the fact that, on many dimensions, right-wing candidates actually embraced more moderate positions. They remained far right on crime and immigration, but on other issues, they moved significantly toward more moderate stances.

A ‘Trumpian Feel’ with Chilean Characteristics

Is Kast’s “Trumpian feel”—manifested in slogans like “put Chileans first” and the emphasis on a “Border Shield”—primarily a strategic, populist communication style intended to mobilize an “angry electorate,” or does it reflect a deeper, more permanent ideological mutation of the Chilean far right?

Professor Patricio Navia: That’s a great question. I think this trend of trying to make every right-wing candidate everywhere into a Trumpian candidate can lead to some misconceptions. Trump is a protectionist; Kast is a free-market advocate. Trump has embraced some conservative values; Kast has always lived by those conservative values. So, there are some significant differences.

The issue of migration in the US has been around for a long time, whereas in Chile it is a much more recent phenomenon. About 20 years ago, only 1 or 2% of Chile’s population consisted of migrants; now it is more than 10%. So, migration has become a major social issue in Chile over the past few years, precisely because so many migrants have arrived.

Kast has successfully connected the issue of migration with the issue of insecurity, and thus the border-protection message he promotes is associated with insecurity more than with migration itself. It is not that Chileans don’t want migrants; it is that they don’t want criminals coming through the border. So, I would qualify that statement a bit.

However, it is true that as the two issues become intertwined, an anti-crime platform also becomes an anti-immigration platform, and it becomes more nationalist and more nativist. That merging of crime and migration is what makes Kast’s policies feel Trumpian, because Trump—and the broader far right—advanced the idea that migration and crime are essentially the same thing.

But some of Kast’s border-protection proposals are actually more sensible, given that Chile had never really dealt with such a large migration wave. The country needed a policy update to address massive, and especially undocumented, migration. Some of the measures Kast proposes are similar to those proposed by the left. There are aspects of his agenda that are clearly far right, but others are far more reasonable.

Mandatory Voting Reshapes Chile’s Electorate

Chileans wait in line to vote in the October 25, 2020 national plebiscite in Chillán, deciding whether to replace the Pinochet-era Constitution. Photo: Marcelo Vildósola Garrigó.

Your research has analyzed the explanatory power of ideology and economic perceptions, particularly among moderates and non-aligned voters. How has the reintroduction of compulsory voting impacted the distribution of this “elastically” voting segment, and to what degree is the far right’s current success a function of this institutional change?

Professor Patricio Navia: That’s a great question, because participation rates in Chile were about 45–50% in previous elections, but with mandatory voting in this election, participation increased to about 85%. And most of the new voters are people who do not identify themselves on the right–left scale, or the left–right scale. These are voters who don’t really care that much about politics. They’re discontent, and they can be mobilized on an anti-elite platform. That probably explains why one of the candidates, Franco Parisi, ended up in third place as the anti-elite, anti-establishment candidate.

So, these voters are not well defined by the left–right scale, but they are discontent with the elites. It is important to keep that in mind, because discontent with the elites often manifests itself as discontent with the incumbent government. So, as soon as Kast wins the election, if he does win in the runoff, he will become the personification of the elites. These people who have voted against the elites will end up voting against Kast. So, this is not a case of the Chilean electorate moving to the right; the Chilean electorate is punishing those in power. When Kast becomes the president in power, that electorate will turn against him just as it has turned against the left-wing president, Gabriel Boric. So, those who think that Chileans have now become rightist, and will support a right-wing president, will probably be in for a surprise, because the same voters who threw the left-wing administration out of power—or are about to—are the voters who will later disapprove of President Kast when he personifies the political and business elite.

Why the Crime–Migration Link May Backfire

The dominance of law-and-order issues, security, and immigration has marked the 2025 campaign. How does the far right’s ability to seamlessly link transnational crime with undocumented migration reinforce a nativist, anti-elite populist narrative, and how does this challenge establish theories of issue ownership in comparative politics?

Professor Patricio Navia: That’s also a great question, because the right has campaigned on a strong anti-crime platform. But given the globalization of criminal networks and given the ease with which you can access weapons in Chile and other countries, it is not altogether clear what the right can actually do to reduce levels of crime and the perception of insecurity. Even if the right were to enforce policies that restricted individual liberties, it wouldn’t be easy to control crime, because crime responds to other phenomena, including technological developments, the ease of accessing weapons, and globalization.

So, I think that by promising they will solve the economic issue and the crime and insecurity issue, right-wing candidates are setting themselves up for a task that will not be easily accomplished—and that will eventually lead to a punishment vote against them. That doesn’t mean that the left will necessarily return to power; it might be that a populist left comes to power instead. But we know that governments should not promise things they cannot deliver.

One of the issues here is that the right has promised things that cannot be delivered. I mean, President—soon to be president, I suppose—Kast has suggested that he will ask undocumented immigrants in Chile to pay for their own plane tickets to return to their home countries. We know that’s not going to happen. But he is generating this expectation that you can pretty much kick out of the country 10% of the population, or half of them, or a third of them, who are undocumented immigrants. Many immigrants do have documents and have the right to stay in Chile. But this idea that you can easily solve problems will eventually channel the discontent against this government that promised easy solutions—solutions that are not materializing.

Sociotropic Anxiety and the Right’s Advantage

Protesters chant against President Sebastián Piñera during the October 22, 2019 demonstrations following Chile’s social uprising. Photo: Marcelo Vildósola Garrigó.

Given your findings on the economic vote in the 2021 election, when no incumbent candidate was running, how does the economic performance under the Boric government shape the socio-tropic and ego-tropic perceptions of voters deciding between two ideologically extreme opposition candidates in the 2025 runoff?

Professor Patricio Navia: I’ve been thinking about that point exactly over the past few days. We know that people who have positive ego-tropic perceptions normally think they will do better than the country. So, they are more optimistic about what will happen to them personally, as opposed to what happens to the country. But people with negative economic perceptions, particularly socio-tropic perceptions, tend to vote against the incumbent government. I think that favors all the right-wing candidates, including Franco Parisi, who positioned themselves as opposition candidates. So, when people are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, they vote for the opposition, and that’s exactly what happened this time around.

But people also want hope. So, they ended up voting for an opposition that offered a way out—or a way forward—for Chile in the coming years. That distinction matters, because people care about the economy, they look back and reward or punish the government, but they also look forward and decide which of the available options they find more convincing. Now, right-wing candidates in general have very similar economic policy proposals. So, the main difference between them ended up being their views on crime, not their economic proposals about how to put Chile back on the right track economically.

Kast Navigates Pinochet’s Legacy—Carefully

Poster of Augusto Pinochet on display at the La Moneda Cultural Center beneath Citizenry Square in Santiago, Chile. Photo: Dreamstime.

Your work has mapped the incidence of authoritarian values on vote choice in the constitutional process. Has Kast’s repeated electoral performance effectively mainstreamed the defense of Augusto Pinochet’s economic or public-order legacy, or is this defense still a liability that can be mobilized by the left to curb the far right’s potential?

Professor Patricio Navia: I think time does have an effect. It’s now been almost 40 years since the end of the military dictatorship. Pinochet died in 2006, and even though there is still a Pinochet legacy—and, in general, Chileans don’t want to support somebody who defends Pinochet—Chileans have come to terms with the positive aspects of the economic reforms that Pinochet implemented during military rule. Chileans are strongly against the dictatorship’s human rights violations and authoritarian legacy, but they are supportive of the economic model implemented under military rule. And they are now somewhat more favorable toward law-and-order policies, as Pinochet is perceived to have been tough on crime. So, there is some support for tough-on-crime policies.

But Kast has been very careful not to express support for the Pinochet dictatorship. He will normally say, “I support the economic reforms that Pinochet implemented, but I oppose human rights violations.” In this way, he seeks to differentiate the two things. The fact that he is relatively young—he was just an adolescent during the Pinochet years—makes it easier for him to distance himself from Pinochet, because he entered politics after Pinochet had left office. So, time helps him a bit. Some of the other right-wing candidates, particularly Evelyn Matthei, were much closer to the military dictatorship than Kast was, and that makes it more difficult for her to distance herself from the Pinochet legacy. But the one positive thing about this is that not even the most right-wing candidate today has good things to say about Pinochet, and I think that is good for democracy in Chile. Kast has good things to say about the economic reforms Pinochet implemented, but not about the other aspects of the Pinochet legacy.

How the Far Right Mastered New Media

Social Media

Given your research on political participation and online efficacy, how has the far right, in particular, leveraged digital media to bypass traditional gatekeepers and translate specific patterns of “online efficacy” into real-world political mobilization, particularly among first-time or “angry” voters?

Professor Patricio Navia: This is very important, because a lot of people continue to fight over legacy media—traditional media and access to traditional media. But I think one of the strategies that Kast tried very successfully, and that other people like Parisi or Johannes Kaiser, the other far-right candidate, also used, was to bypass legacy media and go straight to new media, online media, to reach voters, particularly discontented voters. One of the problems of the traditional right-wing candidates, like Evelyn Matthei, is that she relied way too much on traditional media and didn’t do nearly as well on online media.

Now, most people who don’t care about politics don’t pay attention to traditional media, particularly political programs. So if you want to reach those voters—especially the discontented, and even those who might be economically successful but still indifferent to politics—you have to use online media and work around issues of internal efficacy (how people feel about the political system) and external efficacy (how people perceive the political system responding to them).

And there’s an important side note: Chile grants permanent residents the right to vote if they have lived in the country for at least five years. So, what’s fascinating is that many of the immigrants at the center of the campaign also had the right to vote. José Antonio Kast therefore had to criticize undocumented immigrants or criminal migrants on the one hand, while on the other hand catering to new immigrants who do have the right to vote—offering them economic policies and proposals promising employment opportunities and social inclusion.

The advantage of online media is that you can tailor different messages to different audiences if you understand how the algorithms work. One big lesson is that if you want to win elections, you have to understand new media. The left understood new media well in the 2021 election; this time around, they also performed well online, but it was difficult because discontent with the outgoing government was very high. So, even if they reached those voters, convincing them that the country was on the right track was very difficult, because people perceive every day that the country is not on the right track.

Kast, Bolsonaro, Milei: Similar Style, Different Substance

The news links Chile’s shift to the right with regional trends. How does the specific architecture of the populist discourse employed by Kast (combining social conservatism, nativism, and Pinochet nostalgia) structurally compare to the neo-populism of figures like Bolsonaro or Milei, particularly regarding the role of economic vs. cultural grievances?

Professor Patricio Navia: Bolsonaro was not a free-market advocate in the way that Milei or Kast are. In style, Kast is far more conservative and traditional than Milei. You don’t see Kast with a chainsaw. Kast is not a former member of the military, as Bolsonaro is, but they do share this anti-woke discourse—this idea that the far left has captured the cultural debate in the country and that the country has to go back to traditions and to a kind of simpler moral order where there is good and there is bad. So, in that dimension, the cultural anti-woke discourse is where Kast and the other right-wing candidates in Chile connect with this nativist international right in ways that are truly concerning for the rights of different minorities. In that sense, I think there is a lot of similarity, but they are all anti-woke. Yet Kast is pro-market, Kast is pro–law and order, and Kast is certainly not against globalization in many other dimensions. He is probably against the idea of globalization in that cultural dimension—what they define as wokeism.

Moderate Congress to Block Kast’s Social Conservatism

Given your findings on gender-affinity voting in legislative elections, how might the gender cleavage (and the mobilization of women voters) impact the legislative support for Kast’s socially conservative agenda, particularly in a potentially polarized Congress?

Professor Patricio Navia: In the short run, I don’t think Kast can advance his conservative social agenda simply because he’s just not going to have the votes in Congress. There is significant representation for moderate right-wing parties, and those parties are not going to embrace that socially conservative agenda. So, I don’t see that as a big threat. I do see the government, in the public discourse, going against wokeism and against what they define as gender ideology that grants rights to gender or sexual minorities. I do see them going in that direction from the executive branch, but not legislatively.

Now, part of the problem—or the advantage—for the right-wing parties in Chile today is that during the constitution-writing process, the push to go to the other extreme in terms of gender identity was perhaps a bit too much. So, Chileans are now more supportive of gradual changes rather than radical ones. In Chile, historically, the notion of gender issues or a gender perspective is associated with the left. And now the right is offering a different take on gender views. Traditional gender roles are also gender views, and they are saying that when you talk about gender, you are not necessarily talking exclusively about feminism—you can also talk about traditional gender roles for women. So, I think we’re going to see a significant intellectual and cultural debate about what gender roles actually mean in today’s society.

Kast’s Victory Depends on Moderation, Not Radicalism

If Kast wins, what are the irreversible consequences for the moderate/traditional Chilean center-right? Will the far right become the new, dominant ideological center of the right-wing bloc, or are there historical and institutional mechanisms that could force a moderation of the far right’s most extreme stances?

Professor Patricio Navia: I think that for Kast to win in the runoff, he’s going to have to embrace more moderate views in many areas. He has already done so. I mean, we just had the first-round vote, and he has adopted the more moderate economic policies of the traditional right-wing candidate. So, I think Kast understands—particularly after the Boric administration—that if he wants to maintain a majority, he has to become somewhat more moderate.

The lesson from the Boric administration is that every time the outgoing president took far-left positions, he lost support. And when he adopted more moderate left-wing positions, he regained support. So, I think Kast is going to have to learn from that as well, because Chileans ended up voting for two radical candidates in the first round, but they want them to govern as moderates. That is one of the ironies of Chilean politics: voters choose a radical left-wing candidate, and when he starts governing as a radical leftist, they abandon him and push him toward more moderate positions.

I think the same will happen with Kast. If Kast tries to govern as a radical right-wing leader, people will abandon him, and they will push him into more moderate positions. That means that, in the end, the right-wing parties that Kast represents will probably end up competing with the traditional right-wing parties for moderate right-wing support, because there are far more voters in centrist positions in Chile than in radical positions.

Kast Faces Constitutional Walls, Not Blank Checks

National Congress of Chile Building, Valparaiso. Photo: Luis Sandoval Mandujano.

If a Kast administration were to implement authoritarian-leaning security measures, what is the most critical risk to Chile’s democratic stability: the specific policies themselves (e.g., military deployment, mass incarceration), or the normalization of executive power expansion justified by the populist mandate of public security?

Professor Patricio Navia: I think that in Chile, institutions are strong enough. I don’t see the president taking power over Congress. In fact, over the past years, we have seen Congress becoming more powerful than the president, relative to what the Constitution prescribes. The Constitution is very presidentialist, but over the past decade Congress has exerted a great deal of control—even beyond what the Constitution formally grants—over the president.

So, I don’t see how Kast could move outside of that framework, because he is not going to have a majority in Congress. In the US, President Trump was able to push boundaries because he had a majority in both chambers of Congress. But in Chile, Congress will significantly curtail the president, and he is not going to be able to accumulate more power.

The president will certainly take on some of the anti-crime agenda in order to deliver on the promises he has made. But I don’t think he will be able to go beyond what the Constitution allows, simply because he won’t have the necessary support. He will win the runoff—but he received only 24% in the first round, so he will win the runoff because the alternative is worse for many voters. Chileans are going to vote more against the Communist Party candidate than for Kast. So, I don’t see a power grab as a plausible scenario for José Antonio Kast.

I also don’t see him bringing back Pinochet nostalgia, because Chileans are simply not supportive of Pinochet. If he were to say that Pinochet was good, he would lose popular support. He will try to implement a strict law-and-order agenda, but Chileans are also very much in favor of private property and individual freedom. So, I think there will be a tension there. Everybody wants to be safe, but nobody wants to have police officers searching them. There will have to be a balance between this promise of law and order and the well-established demands of Chileans for individual freedom and liberty.

Rebuilding the Center: A Supply Problem, Not Demand

If the election results demonstrate the weakness of the political center (with the runoff between the two extremes), what long-term mechanisms—perhaps drawing on the history of political stability you studied—must Chileans rely upon to rebuild a viable and moderate political center?

Professor Patricio Navia: I don’t know how you can rebuild a political center. The problem is more a problem of supply than of demand. We just don’t have strong enough centrist political parties that attract voters. But polls do tell us, time and again, that voters are far more moderate than the choices they make in presidential elections. So, even though it looks as if Chile is deeply polarized between a far-left and a far-right presidential candidate, most voters remain significantly moderate. They defend market-friendly values; they also defend individual rights and a strong system of social protection. So, voters, in their preferences, are far more moderate; they may vote for radical left- or right-wing candidates, but they expect those candidates to govern as moderates.

As to whether political parties will emerge that represent moderate voters, I don’t know, and I think the electoral rules are not really conducive to moderates winning elections. But I do know that once a president comes into office, the electorate exerts centripetal pressure that pushes the president toward more moderate positions. Four years ago, Chile elected a far-left president who had promised he would destroy the neoliberal economic model, and here we are, four years later, with everyone saying the president was mostly a moderate center-left—though he didn’t start out that way. Voters ended up pushing him in that direction. I think the same will happen with José Antonio Kast.

No Majority, No Radicals: The Limits of a Kast Presidency

Chilean presidential runoff at Instituto Presidente Errázuriz in Santiago. Voters cast ballots in the December 19, 2021 election between José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric. Photo: Dreamstime.

If a Kast presidency faces a hostile or fragmented Congress, how might the use of the partial presidential veto—which you analyzed as an executive-legislative bargaining tool in the post-Pinochet era—be employed to push forward security and immigration legislation, potentially exacerbating confrontations between state powers?

Professor Patricio Navia: I don’t think there will be much confrontation, precisely because the president has the veto. Most of the bills that pass are presidential bills, so the president is going to send bills to Congress. Congress will water those bills down, because they will need to be moderated in order to achieve a majority. But if legislators go too far, the president will threaten to issue a veto on a bill he doesn’t like. And yes, he might be able to veto some bills introduced by legislators.

But for the most part, there will have to be negotiation between Congress and the president, and the median voter in Congress is a centrist senator or a centrist member of the Chamber of Deputies. So, even if the president wanted to pass more radical right-wing proposals, he’s not going to be able to. The same happened with President Boric. He sent bills that were far to the left, and Congress moderated them. We will see pretty much the same dynamic this time around. We do have a fragmented Congress, but the decisive legislator in each chamber is a centrist. So, if you want to pass bills, you’ll have to rally the support of centrist legislators to get them through.

Chile Won’t Choose Between the US and China

Given Chile’s vital economic importance (copper/lithium) and its trade balance with China, how would a Kast presidency—which seeks closer “Trump-style” alliances in the region—navigate the inevitable geopolitical tension between its security and trade partners?

Professor Patricio Navia: I find that to be the most fascinating challenge for President Kast—or for any president in Chile. Because Chile has historically been an ally, at least for the past 35 years, of the United States. But our main trade partner is China. So, every time we see Chile, or the United States and China, sort of going at each other, Chileans are like: please, please stop. Because you are my friend, and you are my main trade partner, so I want you to get along, because I cannot and will not take sides.

And the same thing happened with Argentina with President Milei. President Milei is really pro-Trump, but the main trade partner for Argentina is still China, and it will continue to be. So, Chile’s main trade partner is going to be China, and that will likely remain the case. Chile will tell the US: look, if you want to engage more in trade, we’ll be happy to do it with you, but we live off the trade we have with China, so we cannot abandon China. We want to be friends with you and with China. Don’t force us to take sides, because if you do, we’re going to have to really think about it—because we truly depend economically on the goods that China buys from us.

Chile’s Populism Isn’t Pinochetist—It’s Anti-Elite

And lastly, Professor Navia, should the term “populism” in the Chilean context be redefined to more explicitly account for the unique synthesis of Pinochet-era nostalgic authoritarianism with modern, “Trumpian” nativist and anti-globalist communication, rather than relying solely on traditional models of economic clientelism or personalistic charismatic leadership?

Professor Patricio Navia: Populism is always a disputed concept. I think the most appropriate way to understand populism in Chile today is really the opposition against the elites, the anti-elite sentiment, and the perception that the population is abused by this corrupt elite. So, it’s not really about Pinochet or not Pinochet. The authoritarian component is more about conservative views than about populist views. We see populism on both the left and the right offering people this idea that “we are going to get rid of these corrupt elites so that you can be free.” In that dimension, Kast was probably far less of a populist than Kaiser, the other far-right candidate, or Parisi. So, the one piece of good news about Chile is that even though there is still a lot of support for populism, the non-populist candidates ended up doing a bit better.

I wouldn’t consider Kast a populist. I would probably consider him a religiously conservative, somewhat authoritarian, nostalgic-authoritarian leader, but not a populist. He campaigns on cutting the budget by 6 points of GDP. He campaigned on tightening social spending. He didn’t campaign on increasing services and subsidies for people. So, in that sense, he’s more of an authoritarian and very conservative figure than, in the traditional sense, a populist candidate. He won the vote among foreigners in Chile—foreigners who have the right to vote. So, he uses a nativist discourse, but not against immigrants. He frames the issue as being against criminals—many of whom are immigrants and come from other countries—but he also catered to the immigrant community, winning a majority of the immigrant vote in Chile.

Daytime view of Akihabara in Tokyo, known as “Electric Town” for its many electronics shops, duty-free stores, and vibrant youth culture. Photo: Dreamstime.

Prof. Klein: It Is Difficult to Label Japanese PM Takaichi a Populist, Despite Her Nationalism and Anti-Feminism

by Editor’s ChoiceGenderHomeInterviews

In this incisive interview for the ECPS, Professor Axel Klein offers a nuanced assessment of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ideological profile. While her blend of nationalism, anti-feminism, and strong-leader rhetoric has led some observers to categorize her as a populist, Professor Klein cautions against this simplification. As he notes, “nationalism and anti-feminism… are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.” Instead, he situates PM Takaichi within Japan’s broader political culture—one shaped by nostalgia, stability-seeking voters, and the enduring dominance of the LDP—arguing that her conservatism reflects continuity more than populist rupture.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Sanae Takaichi’s rise to the premiership marks one of the most significant ideological shifts in Japanese politics in recent decades. Her ascent has sparked debates not only within Japan but also among scholars of comparative populism who are examining whether her blend of nationalism, anti-feminism, and assertive leadership constitutes a new populist moment in East Asia. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Axel Klein— Professor for Social Sciences of East Asia / Japanese Politics at Institute of East Asian Studies and Faculty of Social Science, University of Duisburg-Essen and one of Europe’s leading specialists on Japanese politics and populism—offers a nuanced interpretation of her leadership style and ideological positioning.

Reflecting on the definitional complexities of populism, Professor Klein begins by cautioning against the automatic classification of PM Takaichi as a populist merely because she deploys rhetoric familiar from global right-wing movements. As he notes, “I think you would find it difficult to label her a populist… nationalism and anti-feminism… are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.” This observation forms the conceptual backbone of the interview. It foregrounds a tension between PM Takaichi’s affective, backward-looking appeals and the analytical criteria political scientists typically use to identify populist actors.

Several sections of the interview explore the symbolic and strategic dimensions of her conservatism. PM Takaichi’s frequent invocation of Margaret Thatcher, for instance, is not simply an ideological alignment but part of a deliberate performance of decisiveness and moral clarity. Professor Klein situates this “Thatcherian” posture within Japan’s evolving political culture, noting that a significant segment of the electorate has come to desire a strong, assertive leader capable of cutting through bureaucratic inertia. Her rejection of feminist policy is similarly framed as part of a broader moral and nostalgic project rather than a carefully structured ideological program.

The interview further scrutinizes PM Takaichi’s positioning in domestic and international contexts: her recourse to economic protectionism toward China, her appeal to Japan’s aging conservative base, and her relationship to emergent right-wing actors such as Sanseito. Professor Klein’s long-term analysis of Japanese democratic institutions raises critical questions about whether her brand of conservative moralism represents a stabilizing force or a potential risk for democratic quality. While Japan’s electoral patterns and party system differ markedly from Western cases of democratic backsliding, Professor Klein argues that structural conservatism, low youth engagement, and a dominant-party landscape may create conditions in which moralizing politics can flourish without substantial opposition.

Taken together, the interview provides an analytically rich and contextually grounded assessment of PM Takaichi’s leadership, situating her not as a straightforward populist but as a figure whose political significance lies in the interplay between nostalgia, nationalism, and Japan’s institutional continuity.

Axel Klein is a Professor for Social Sciences of East Asia / Japanese Politics at Institute of East Asian Studies and Faculty of Social Science, University of Duisburg-Essen and one of Europe’s leading specialists on Japanese politics and populism.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Axel Klein, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Takaichi’s Nationalism and Anti-Feminism Don’t Make Her a Populist

Professor Axel Klein, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your work on East Asian populism, you describe Japan’s populist movements as “muted” compared to their Western counterparts. How does Sanae Takaichi’s ascent complicate this framework? Does her blend of nationalism, charisma, and anti-feminism mark a new populist phase in Japanese politics?

Professor Axel Klein: I think it depends a bit on your definition of populism. In political science, we have three or four dominant concepts of populism, and if you applied these concepts to Mrs. Takaichi, I think you would find it difficult to label her a populist. There are also a number of less well-known concepts, and perhaps she would meet some of those criteria here and there, but personally, I find it difficult to call her a populist. That is because nationalism and anti-feminism, or a marked disregard for any feminist agenda, are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.

Takaichi’s Strong-Leader Persona Reflects Voter Desire, Not Ideological Thatcherism

PM Takaichi frequently invokes Margaret Thatcher as a role model. To what extent does this “Thatcherian populism” reflect a fusion of neoliberal economics and patriarchal conservatism unique to Japan’s political culture?

Professor Axel Klein: If you consider simple messaging and clear-cut language as a populist trait, then that’s probably something Mrs. Takaichi tries, and in that sense, she may appear similar to Margaret Thatcher. She has referred to her, as you rightly said, and the image of the Iron Lady may be something Mrs. Takaichi wants to project. But she hasn’t really had enough time to prove that she can be such a hardliner. The Japanese political system, especially the power structure within the LDP, doesn’t necessarily allow someone to push through a reform agenda. Thatcher did that with a neoliberal reform agenda, and she had Ronald Reagan at her side—these two were, so to speak, the neoliberal pioneers of that era. I don’t see that context in the case of Takaichi.

What I find interesting, despite many commentaries to the contrary, is that while some argue Japanese culture doesn’t allow for a strong leader, my experience observing Japanese politics over the last 30 or 40 years suggests that a large share of the population actually wants one. People want someone who can take decisive action. Mr. Ishiba, who was of course Mrs. Takaichi’s predecessor, tried the opposite approach. He was very considerate, spoke to many involved parties, and tried to take numerous views into account—but this slowed him down and made it difficult for people to see any progress. Mrs. Takaichi seems to try to convey the image of someone who can make decisions and push them through. And that may be exactly the kind of strong leadership many people in Japan are looking for, because they have seen that a more considerate, slower approach may not deliver the results they want, especially lowering consumer prices.

As long as people expect Mrs. Takaichi to be a decisive leader, I think her support rates will stay high, and as long as they stay high, the LDP will follow her. So, the comparison with Mrs. Thatcher may be sustained by the fact that Mrs. Takaichi is a female leader, lacks feminist motivation, and had to push aside many male competitors. But regarding tough decision-making, we are still waiting. She hasn’t had much time yet, so we need to be a bit patient.

Takaichi’s Gender ‘Takes a Backseat’ in Conservative Japan

How does PM Takaichi’s gender—combined with her rejection of feminist policy—function symbolically within a patriarchal political order? Is her leadership likely to reinforce or subtly reconfigure Japan’s gendered hierarchies of power?

Professor Axel Klein: If you look at Angela Merkel in Germany and Mrs. Thatcher in Britain, and the same is true for Mrs. Meloni in Italy, gender takes a backseat. The issue is not particularly relevant to these leaders. There are many other characteristics that matter more when trying to understand how they function and why they do what they do. And I think with Mrs. Takaichi it’s exactly the same. There may have been some naïve expectations among observers that, because Mrs. Takaichi is a woman, that alone would be reason enough for her to push issues like gender equality. But I’m afraid she may disappoint those expectations. She may instead show that Japan is not so much a patriarchal order as a very conservative one, dominated by people who have risen through the system and are willing to defend it against progressive ideas. And if you take that view, then you will see that the gender or sex of the leader isn’t really important.

Nostalgia, Not Populism, Defines Takaichi’s Leadership Style

In the comparative perspective you have applied to European and Asian populisms, how might we situate Takaichi’s brand of leadership alongside figures such as Giorgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen—female leaders who combine nationalist populism with anti-feminist discourse?

Professor Axel Klein: Let’s leave the question whether Mrs. Takaichi is a populist or not aside for the moment. First of all, she is someone who represents the wish to return to the good old days. And that, again, is indeed something that populists sometimes refer to. And when I say the good old days, I mean the time maybe in the 1980s, when Japan was economically really doing well, the 1970s, when it was economically growing, the 1960s, of course, when the LDP was still the dominant political force, running the country all by itself from 1955 to 1993, so almost four decades of LDP rule, and where everything seemed to be more predictable, stable.

And that was before, of course, there was political upheaval in Japan in the sense that other parties took over government, even though just for a very short period of time, but that created some instability. And then, of course, about 20–25 years ago, we had Prime Minister Koizumi, who introduced a number of neoliberal ideas and carried out major reforms. His key project was the privatization of the postal services. So if you are now a conservative leader who claims to protect the country and its people from many of these progressive, neoliberal ideas—also on a social level—you can argue that such reforms have made life more difficult for ordinary people.

What Mrs. Takaichi would probably refer to is more of what Abe Shinzo, former prime minister, referred to as beautiful Japan. He had this book published, he was the author, and he described a Japan that was a Japan of the good old days. Of course, Mrs. Takaichi also represents the hope of the LDP to return to that dominant position that the party was in 30 years ago.

‘Sanaenomics’ Is More PR Than Populism

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Dreamstime.

You have written extensively about the nexus between populist rhetoric and technocratic governance in Japan. How does PM Takaichi’s economic policy—her so-called “Sanaenomics”—use populist language of protection and prosperity while maintaining elite continuity within the LDP?

Professor Axel Klein: Mrs. Takaichi claims to revive Japan, which is something that a couple of prime ministers before her have also done. Reviving Japan—that’s more or less her slogan. Looking from the outside, and as you can see, I’m not a Japanese voter, I’ve always wondered who has actually been in power over the last 30 years, because the LDP has always claimed to know how to solve the crisis Japan is in. And most election campaigns over the last decades really looked a bit like this: there is a huge crisis, only we know how to deal with it. Don’t try any experiments, Mr. or Mrs. Voter. Choose the LDP, and we will take care of it.

But what the LDP has never addressed is the question: who is in charge? Who is responsible for this crisis? Isn’t the government of the day, or the governments of previous years, also responsible for what is happening? Yet the LDP has always portrayed the crisis as something coming from the outside, caused by external factors beyond its control.

So Mrs. Takaichi speaks to what is possibly the most important wish of voters, which is stability. That’s a term that comes up a lot in the LDP’s election campaigns. If you are looking for one red line running through all LDP governments over the last decades, it is this: stability, security, and, in a way, the promise of a carefree life. By the way, that’s what Mrs. Takaichi also emphasized in her speech in Parliament—that in order to stabilize politics, she agreed to form a coalition with the Japan Restoration Party or Japan Innovation Party, whichever English translation you prefer.

This is interesting because this coalition between the LDP and the Restoration Party does not even have a majority. They are one seat short. They don’t have a majority in the lower house, and they don’t have a majority in the upper house. So if you look at it closely, you may ask yourself: where is the stability?

Takaichi’s Economic Agenda Echoes Abenomics

But anyway, leaving that aside—Sanaenomics? To me, it’s like Abenomics. It’s a PR term that professional advertisers have come up with. It may be wise not to spend too much time discussing this, because we should judge or assess her performance as prime minister by what she does, not what she says. That is universally true. And I’m not an economist, so I don’t know whether there is some secret recipe behind what she says she wants to do as prime minister.

But in preparation for this conversation with you, I have a little quotation here from her speech, and please bear with me—I’ll read it, and then you’ll see what I’m driving at. Mrs. Takaichi said in Parliament: “We endeavor to raise incomes, transform people’s mindsets regarding consumption, and boost tax revenues without raising tax rates as business earnings increase, all in keeping with our approach of responsible and proactive public finances.”

So it’s a bet on economic growth that will pay more taxes or produce more tax revenue, and all of this will supposedly be driven by domestic consumption. If that is a viable option, I wonder why the LDP hasn’t done anything like this before. And it’s a bit like promising everything to everyone. So, again, maybe we shouldn’t look at what she has announced and what she has said, but wait for what she will actually do.

Takaichi’s Hard Line Plays Domestically but Complicates Diplomacy

Photo: Dreamstime.

How do you interpret PM Takaichi’s invocation of sovereignty and economic independence from China in the context of populist “economic nationalism”? Does it resonate domestically as protectionist populism, or as pragmatic geopolitics?

Professor Axel Klein: The relationship with China has always been difficult and on thin ice. It’s easily disturbed. Since 1999, when Komeito joined the LDP as a coalition partner, Komeito acted as a stabilizing factor. For several reasons, it has very close relations with China, and I remember a very tense period between the two countries when then Prime Minister Abe sent the leader of Komeito to Beijing to mend the relationship. But now that Komeito is no longer part of the coalition, options for communication between the two governments—sometimes even discreet, below-the-surface channels that are crucial in diplomacy—have become more limited.

Mrs. Takaichi has already provoked significant protests from China. We know about the Chinese diplomat who made an inappropriate remark about her, and we have seen the usual reaction in China, especially among the public, where people cancel flights to Japan and say they no longer want to visit. So, a remark meant to signal Japan’s stance toward Taiwan brought about all these consequences.

It may be that Mrs. Takaichi still has hawkish instincts that make it difficult for her to stay consistent in her foreign policy agenda. And if she cannot control these impulses, it will be difficult to achieve more harmonious relations with China. But this is not only because of her own views; it is also because China tends to react very strongly to such statements from foreign leaders.

‘Good Old Times’ Conservatism Drives Takaichi’s Moral Appeal

Takaichi’s rhetoric fuses anti-feminist appeals with nationalist morality. Does this align with the moral populism you’ve analyzed in Japan’s right-wing discourse—where the “moral majority” is mobilized against both foreign and liberal domestic elites?

Professor Axel Klein: That’s a very important question. Mrs. Takaichi, as I said before, represents the good old times. So she clearly doesn’t stand for a socially progressive agenda. The good old times also featured a very weak political left, sometimes none to speak of, and what is generally referred to as a convoy economy—where everyone in Japan, at least those who worked in certain industries and companies and their families, joined a national effort to grow the domestic economy. And that, of course, included women staying home to take care of the family and children, and the single breadwinner model, where husbands went out to work. Everyone was supposed to benefit from this arrangement. That was the general idea.

This convoy economy doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for quite some time. But it remains part of the nostalgic image people have of the good old days, and foreign influences and liberal forces are seen as obstacles to returning to that ideal. In the upper house election last July, we saw a right-wing party grow—Sanseito, which translates itself into English as the Do-It-Yourself Party. This refers to their idea: if there is no political party you like and want to support, then create one yourself. That was their basic message. They emerged out of the pandemic, with many people sitting at home in front of their computers, and the man who founded the party gathered enough support and followers on YouTube and other social media platforms. Then he—or they, since it wasn’t his work alone—created Sanseito.

‘Japanese First’ Spiral Pushes LDP Rightward

Poster for the Sanseito political party featuring its leader Sohei Kamiya and the slogan “Japanese First” in Tokyo, Japan on October 9, 2025: Photo: Hiroshi Mori.

But no one really cared about them at first. They had a supporter base of around 1.5 million people, which is a lot, but not enough to make decisive inroads into Japanese politics. In the lower house general election last October, they were not very successful; they had not much more than those 1.5 million supporters. But then in June this year, they started campaigning with the slogan “Japanese First.” Their agenda combined anti-liberal ideas and strong skepticism toward anything coming from abroad. And because “Japanese First” sounded like what Trump and his MAGA movement do with “America First,” the mass media picked up the story. And the mass media—and we’ve done research on this at my university—really were the ones who made Sanseito widely known.

Then you have this spiral, where the party is discussed in major newspapers and on TV, and foreign journalists also pick up the story: “Oh, finally, we have a right-wing populist party in Japan—the Sanseito—and they’re xenophobic, they don’t like foreigners.” You saw stories about tourists misbehaving, about people on social welfare without Japanese citizenship, etc. All of this reinforced itself. It was like a spiral that kept growing, and more and more people learned about Sanseito. By the upper house election last year, the result was that they gained far more seats than they would have with normal media coverage.

I think that frightened many people in the LDP. They thought a new force might overtake the LDP from the right, so they needed to move rightward to prevent that. That may have been another reason why not only Mrs. Takaichi was elected president of the LDP, but also why her policy agenda is now shifting the country further right than under Ishiba and previous prime ministers.

I don’t know if that will be enough to stop Sanseito. Sanseito, in my view, is a very immature party. It has many proposals that obviously do not work. And based on analyses of voter behavior, it seems many people who usually have little interest in politics saw a new party saying “Japanese First” and superficially liked the idea of a party that claimed it would take care of ordinary Japanese. They may not have taken it as a message against foreigners—only as a good idea: “Let’s take care of the ordinary Japanese, not big companies or banks or other elite groups,” which they think the LDP has favored for too long. And that’s why they voted for Sanseito.

But I’m not sure this success can be sustained. And I’m not very good at predicting the future, so I’ll leave it at that.

Confucian Norms Shape Japan’s Hesitation on Equality Policies

How do you assess the relationship between Japan’s deep-rooted Confucian patriarchy and the populist rejection of gender equality reforms, such as same-sex marriage or separate surnames?

Professor Axel Klein: That is a difficult question for me to answer. Since I’m in Germany, I often compare what is happening in Japan with developments here, and to a certain extent, I also look at other European countries. I observe how their societies evolve and how the legal frameworks governing these communities change. And every now and then, I’ve thought that Japan is following a similar trajectory—only, in some respects, it does so later than European countries. I don’t mean this as negative criticism; I’m simply saying that issues like the ones you raise—same-sex marriage and separate surnames—will probably eventually come.

I think Japan will, at some point, pass legislation allowing same-sex marriage, and it will also change the family-name system, but it will take a little longer. And again, I don’t know whether that is good or bad. I have a personal opinion, of course, but from an academic perspective, all I can really say is that the process takes more time. Currently, couples in Japan do have the option, when they marry, to choose which of the two family names—the husband’s or the wife’s—will become the family name. But I can clearly see why this is not sufficient for people with established careers or simply those who want to keep their own names.

I think pressure within Japanese society is building to the point where these reforms will happen, and even a prime minister like Mrs. Takaichi will not be able to prevent them.

Moral Populism in Japan Runs on Sentiment, Not Structure

A right-wing speaker delivers a public address in the Asakusa district in Tokyo, Japan on December 27, 2015. Though small in number, Japan’s right-wing groups are known for highly visible demonstrations. Photo: Sean Pavone.

To what extent is her moral populism driven by affective nostalgia—an emotional politics of loss centered on family, nation, and purity—rather than coherent ideological reasoning?

Professor Axel Klein: Very much so. As I said before, I think she speaks to a desire felt by many—especially those from their fifties onward, the senior citizens of Japan. There is this idea that in the old days things were better, and objectively, consumer prices, for example, were much lower than they are now. And I think we observe this in many countries: people seem increasingly overwhelmed by the complexities of contemporary life, and many wish to return to how things were 30 or 40 years ago. Of course, there is a great deal of nostalgia in this, and life may not actually have been as easy then as some remember it today.

But it is this deep-rooted longing that Mrs. Takaichi is drawing on, just as Abe did. It’s a kind of promise that cannot really be fulfilled—you can’t turn back time. But I agree: I would rather try to explain Mrs. Takaichi’s policies from this perspective than from any coherent ideological reasoning.

Youth Apathy, Not Populism, Is Japan’s Democratic Weak Point

And lastly, Professor Klein, from your long-term perspective on Japan’s democratic institutions, do you see Takaichi’s populist conservatism as a stabilizing corrective within Japan’s party system—or as a potential source of democratic backsliding under the guise of moral renewal?

Professor Axel Klein: Let me answer that with a question first. Where does Japan slide back to? You may ask how democratic a state can be when it has been run by one dominant party for 65 of the last 70 years. We cannot ignore the fact that Japan’s democracy, even though it is the oldest in Asia, is in this respect quite different from other industrialized countries you might use for comparison. For 65 of the last 70 years, the LDP has been in power, and for most of that time it has governed alone. And when it didn’t, it usually had just one coalition partner.

So, that’s one important characteristic of Japanese democracy. A second is that Japanese voters are overwhelmingly conservative. This is reinforced by the enormous disinterest of young people in politics. Voter turnout among those under 30 is a little over 30%, meaning that two-thirds of young people do not vote. This is a remarkably high number. I actually consider it a disaster for a democracy. You need to get young people involved and interested. I think young people in Japan are not taught what it means to be politically active, what it means to vote. And then, of course, when they grow older, they realize that many things they encounter in daily life—rules, taxes, regulations—are being decided somewhere, and they are being decided by the government. So they should get involved in politics.

I have many Japanese exchange students in my courses here at my university, and it is really frustrating to see how little they care about Japanese politics and how little they know. So my point is this: if young people are so disengaged, and senior citizens want stability and safety, and politics that promise a carefree life, then national politicians may feel they can pursue this moral renewal. But I don’t think voters care much about these ideas. What they care about right now are other problems. High consumer prices, as in most countries. The price of rice is a very symbolic issue that affects everyone in Japan.

And returning to what I said earlier, when you hear what Mrs. Takaichi has said in Parliament about how she intends to tackle these problems, I’m very curious to see whether she will succeed—because personally, I have my doubts.

A man sits in the dark, staring angrily at his mobile phone. Photo: Raman Mistsechka.

Discursive Violence and Moral Repair: The Promise and Limits of Non-Violent Communication Against Populism

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Ozturk, Ibrahim & Fritsch, Claudia. (2025). “Discursive Violence and Moral Repair: The Promise and Limits of Non-Violent Communication Against Populism.” Populism & Politics (P&P). European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). November 19, 2025.  https://doi.org/10.55271/pp0051

 

Abstract

Marking the hundredth anniversary of fascism’s rise in Europe, this article explores the recent resurgence of authoritarian populism—now deeply embedded within democracies and intensified by digital technologies. It investigates how populist actors use emotionally manipulative and polarizing rhetoric, especially on social media, to diminish empathy, increase affective polarization, and weaken public discourse. Using Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) framework, we see populist messaging as a form of discursive violence rooted in blame, moral absolutism, and dehumanization. Conversely, NVC offers a principled way of communicating based on observation, emotional awareness, shared human needs, and compassionate dialogue. Drawing on insights from political communication, discourse analysis, and moral psychology—including moral foundations theory and digital polarization studies—the article examines NVC’s potential as both an interpretive tool and a dialogical intervention. It also discusses important limitations of NVC in adversarial digital environments, such as asymmetrical intent, scalability issues, and the risk of moral equivocation. Ultimately, the article advocates for NVC-informed strategies to restore respectful, empathetic, and authentic free expression amid rising populist manipulation.

Keywords: Authoritarian Populism, Discursive Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Affective Polarization, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Compassionate Dialogue, Moral Foundations Theory, Digital Polarization, Dehumanization, Moral Equivocation, Scalability Challenge

 

By Ibrahim Ozturk & Claudia Fritsch*

Introduction

Populist political movements have surged in recent years, characterized by a style of communication that many observers deem manipulative, polarizing, and emotionally charged. Populist rhetoric typically divides society into a virtuous “people” and a corrupt “elite,” conveying simplistic, us-versus-them narratives while often scapegoating minority groups or outsiders (Engesser et al., 2017). Messages from populist leaders are usually delivered in stark, moralistic terms (e.g., “with us or against us”) and strategically tap into emotions such as anger, fear, and resentment to mobilize support. Indeed, scholars note that populist discourse often employs a “manipulation strategy” that exploits emotions to the detriment of rational political considerations (Charaudeau, 2009). This is especially evident on social media, where algorithm-driven amplification rewards sensational and emotionally charged content, providing populist communicators with an ideal channel to disseminate their messages unfiltered. These trends challenge democratic discourse: How can society counter manipulative and divisive communication without resorting to censorship, instead fostering genuine and constructive dialogue?

This article examines Marshall Rosenberg’s framework of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) as a potential remedy to populist, manipulative discourse. NVC, rooted in principles of empathy, honest expression, and mutual understanding, provides a communication model that starkly contrasts with the populist approach of emotional manipulation and scapegoating. By analyzing insights from political communication, critical discourse analysis, psychology, and digital media studies, we will explain how populist strategies operate on social media and how Rosenberg’s NVC might help protect public discourse against them. We include empirical findings, such as studies of Twitter and Facebook rhetoric, to demonstrate populism’s emotional and divisive tactics. We also explore related psychological theories—from moral foundations to affective polarization—to strengthen the theoretical foundation. Furthermore, we address the limitations and critiques of applying NVC in the complex online populism landscape, including concerns about scalability, bad-faith actors, and the potential for moral neutrality. Ultimately, the aim is to promote a “truly free expression” online—not in the sense of unchecked abuse or propaganda, but a space where citizens can engage honestly without fear, manipulation, or dehumanization—an environment NVC strives to foster.

The article is organized as follows. Section 2 establishes the theoretical framework, beginning with an analysis of populist communication in the digital age and its emotionally manipulative strategies, followed by an in-depth discussion of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model and its foundational principles, and concluding with relevant psychological theories that explain the emotional and moral mechanisms underlying populist appeal, as well as the potential of NVC to address them. Section 3 synthesizes these insights to evaluate how NVC might serve as a discursive counterstrategy to populist manipulation, particularly in online contexts. Section 4 then critically examines the practical challenges and limitations of applying NVC against populist rhetoric, including issues of scalability, asymmetric intent, moral ambiguity, and evidentiary support. Finally, Section 5 concludes by reflecting on the promise and limits of NVC as a communicative antidote to rising authoritarian populism, while offering directions for future research, policy, and civic engagement.

Theoretical Framework

Populist Communication in the Digital Age: Manipulative Strategies and Emotional Appeals

Liberal democracy is facing legitimacy problems due to post-politics, post-democracy, and post-truth dynamics. Populism exploits emotional deficits and distrust in institutions, while digital media amplify fragmentation and emotional escalation (Schenk, 2024). Democracy generates emotional deficits such as individualism and isolation, which foster the rise of “soft despotism” (Helfritzsch & Müller Hipper, 2024). Populist actors exploit these emotional deficits—such as frustration, fear, and mistrust—for mobilization. 

Populism is often seen as a thin-centered ideology or style that pits “the pure people” against “the corrupt elite,” arguing that politics should prioritize the will of ordinary people above all else (Engesser et al., 2017). While populist movements exist across the political spectrum, their communication styles tend to follow common patterns. Research in political communication and discourse analysis reveals that populist actors tend to favor simple, colloquial language and binary framing over nuanced expressions (Engesser et al., 2017). Complex issues are often reduced to black-and-white narratives – for example, “you are either with us or part of the problem” – which reinforces in-group/out-group divisions. This kind of dichotomous framing is further supported by frequent use of stereotypes and sometimes vulgar or insulting language aimed at perceived “enemies,” all to dramatize the threat posed by “the elite” or out-groups. Critical discourse analysts observe that this mode of communication intentionally dehumanizes opponents and criminalizes certain groups, rallying the base while dismissing dissenting voices as illegitimate or evil.

A key feature of populist communication is its emotional strength. Populist leaders intentionally appeal to negative feelings—especially fear, anger, and resentment—to rally support and direct public anger toward specific targets. For example, a content analysis of thousands of Twitter messages by European populist parties found that “fear, uncertainty, or resentment are the emotions most frequently used” by these actors (Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2023). In those social media messages, negative emotional language (expressing threat, crisis, outrage) was closely linked to references to out-groups or “corrupt authorities,” while positive emotions (such as pride or hope) were generally reserved for the in-group—celebrating “the people” or portraying the populist leader as the savior (Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2023). This supports comparative research that suggests populists intentionally stir public anger and fear to rally their supporters. By emphasizing a sense of crisis and victimhood (e.g., depicting society as on the verge of collapse or “invaded” by outsiders), populist rhetoric creates a sense of urgency and danger where extreme actions seem justified. Charaudeau (2009) noted that populist discourse “plays with emotions to the detriment of political reason,” appealing to visceral feelings rather than critical thinking.

The rise of social media has intensified these manipulative techniques. Digital platforms like Twitter and Facebook allow populist politicians to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and connect directly with audiences. In this context, Pörksen (2018) speaks of a weakening of traditional gatekeepers (e.g., journalists) in favor of invisible agents of information filtering and distribution (Pörksen, 2018: 71). Studies show that populists eagerly utilize the features of social media for unfiltered self-promotion and aggressive opposition against opponents (Engesser et al., 2017). They control the online narrative by constantly pumping out simple, emotionally charged messages—attacks on “enemies” and triumphant praise of their own movement. Algorithms, in turn, tend to boost posts that provoke strong reactions. Posts that evoke moral outrage or fear often achieve higher engagement and spread quickly within and across networks (Brady et al., 2017). False or misleading information may also travel farther and faster when presented in dramatic, emotional terms, as shown by studies on the viral spread of conspiracy theories and “fake news” that tap into users’ anxieties. The result is a digital public sphere filled with provocative soundbites that reinforce tribal loyalties and drown out nuance.

Empirical research highlights how these dynamics promote polarization. Recent studies show that platforms like TikTok use algorithms that reinforce emotionally charged and extremist content, leading users—especially youth—into echo chambers that normalize hate and misinformation (FAZ Dossier, 2025: 16–18). This supports the notion that discursive violence is not only rhetorical but structurally embedded in digital systems. The FAZ Dossier highlights how social media platforms are increasingly abandoning traditional moderation in favor of user-driven models, such as ‘Community Notes,’ which may fail to prevent the viral spread of misinformation (FAZ Dossier, 2025: 21–22). This shift underscores the urgency of promoting ethical communication frameworks like NVC. 

A panel study on political social media use found that active engagement—such as regularly sharing, commenting, or posting political content—is linked to increased affective polarization, meaning a stronger dislike of opposing groups. In contrast, passive news consumption or simply scrolling showed no such effect (Matthes et al., 2023). This indicates that the communication style prevalent on social media, not just the content, deepens divisions. Populist communicators, with their emotionally charged and confrontational style, effectively draw followers into a constant online “us vs. them” battle that boosts in-group loyalty while fostering hostility toward outsiders. Over time, these communication patterns can normalize incivility and diminish empathy, as opponents become caricatures or enemies, and “winning” an argument takes precedence over seeking a shared truth. In this environment, the concept of free expression becomes compromised. Although it may seem that everyone can speak on social media, many voices are silenced or self-censored in the toxic atmosphere. Harassment and aggressive attacks—often launched by populist supporters against critics or minority groups—create a chilling effect on free speech, causing targeted individuals to withdraw out of fear of abuse (Amnesty International, 2020). Truly free expression involves an environment where people can share opinions and fact-based rebuttals without being drowned out by intimidation or deception. 

Combating populism’s manipulative communication requires not only fact-checking or content moderation but also a cultural shift in how we communicate—moving from hostility and propaganda toward empathy and honesty. Groeben & Christmann (2023) emphasize that fair argumentation—defined by integrity, rationality, and cooperativity—can serve as a bulwark against social discord and democratic erosion. This aligns closely with Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which seeks to replace adversarial rhetoric with empathetic dialogue. This is where Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication framework offers a promising solution.

Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC): Principles and Aims

Marshall B. Rosenberg (2003)’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a communication methodology rooted in compassion, empathy, and authenticity. Initially developed in the 1960s and 1970s, and elaborated in Rosenberg’s seminal work, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (2003), NVC emerged from a confluence of humanistic psychology (influenced by Carl Rogers’ client-centered therapy), Gandhian nonviolence principles, and practical conflict resolution techniques. At its core, NVC seeks to transform how we relate to one another by replacing habitual patterns of blaming, coercing, or criticizing with a language of feelings and needs. Rosenberg observed that adversarial or judgmental language often provokes defensiveness and disconnection, whereas empathic communication fosters trust and cooperation. NVC aims to enable honest self-expression and respectful listening so that all parties’ underlying human needs can be acknowledged and met through creative, collaborative solutions. NVC is often taught through a structured four-component model that guides individuals to communicate with clarity and empathy (Rosenberg, 2003):

Observation (without evaluation): Describe the concrete facts or actions you observe, without adding any judgment or generalization. For example, instead of saying “You are spreading lies,” one might say “I read the post where you stated X about immigrants.” The goal is to establish a neutral starting point based on observable reality. By separating observation from evaluation, we avoid language that could trigger defensiveness and set a calmer stage for discussion. (As one NVC practitioner notes, rather than “You’re misinformed,” say “I read an article that claims XYZ,” which opens curiosity instead of conflict.)

Feelings: State one’s own emotional response to the observation or attempt to recognize the other person’s feelings. This step involves a vocabulary of emotions (e.g., “I feel frustrated and concerned when I see that claim.”). Importantly, NVC encourages taking ownership of one’s feelings rather than blaming others for them. It also invites empathic guessing of the other’s feelings, demonstrating that one is trying to understand their emotional experience. For instance, “It sounds like you’re feeling afraid and angry about the economic situation.” Naming feelings – both one’s own and the other’s – helps humanize the interaction; instead of two opposing positions, there are two human beings with emotional lives.

Needs: Behind every feeling, according to NVC, lies a human need that is met or unmet. This step articulates the deeper needs or values connected to the feelings. Rosenberg’s approach assumes a universal set of human needs (such as safety, respect, autonomy, belonging, justice, etc.) that motivate our actions. For example: “I need our community to be safe and economically secure, and I guess you also need security and recognition for your work.” In conflict, parties’ strategies may clash, but at the level of fundamental needs, there is potential for common ground. By voicing the needs, we shift attention from personal attacks to the underlying concerns that matter to everyone. Crucially, guessing the other person’s needs (with humility, not presumption) can defuse tension: “Maybe the person sharing a conspiracy theory has an unmet need for understanding or control amid uncertainty.” This does not justify false or harmful statements, but it frames them as tragically misguided attempts to meet legitimate human needs. Such reframing opens the door to compassion: we can condemn the harmful strategy while still acknowledging the human need that drives it.

Request: Finally, NVC suggests making a concrete, positive request that aims to address the needs identified, inviting collaboration. A request is not a demand; the other person should have the freedom to say no or propose an alternative. For example: “Would you be willing to look at this data together and see if it addresses your concerns about jobs being lost?” or “Can we both agree to verify claims from now on before sharing them?” The idea is to foster mutual problem-solving. In a successful NVC exchange, the request emerges naturally after empathy has been established: once both sides feel heard at the level of needs, they are more open to finding a solution that works for all. Requests in NVC are straightforward, doable, and tied to the speaker’s needs – e.g., “I’d like us to have a respectful conversation without name-calling,” rather than a vague “Stop being wrong.” This collaborative tone contrasts with the coercive or zero-sum approach often seen in polarized debates (Kohn, 1990).

Underpinning these four components is an intention of empathy and mutual respect. NVC is often described as a mindset or heart-set as much as a communication technique. It requires genuinely caring about understanding the other’s perspective and honestly expressing one’s own truth. Rosenberg emphasized that NVC is not about being “nice” or avoiding conflict, but about engaging authentically without aggression or contempt. One can still disagree strongly and even confront injustice using NVC, but the confrontation targets the issue or behavior in factual terms, rather than attacking the person’s character. For example, an NVC-informed response to hate speech might be: “When I hear you say, ‘X group is ruining our country,’ I feel alarmed and sad, because I deeply value equality and safety for all people. Would you be willing to tell me what concerns lead you to feel this way? I’d like to understand and then share my perspective too.” This response does not condone the hateful statement; rather, it calls it out as concerning yet invites the person to reveal the fears or needs behind their claim. It keeps the door open for dialogue and potential transformation.

In summary, NVC provides a framework for non-manipulative, compassionately honest communication. Instead of dueling monologues aimed at scoring points (or riling up emotions), NVC calls for dialogue aimed at mutual understanding. This orientation directly challenges the populist communication style: where populism leverages blame and anger, NVC emphasizes empathy and curiosity; where populism simplifies and demonizes, NVC humanizes and searches for underlying concerns; where populism’s goal is to mobilize a base against an enemy, NVC’s goal is to connect people to each other’s humanity and find solutions that address everyone’s needs. But can such an approach gain traction in the rough-and-tumble world of social media and political tribalism? To explore that, we now consider how NVC’s principles intersect with findings from psychology—and whether they might help counter the psychological underpinnings of populist appeal.

Emotional and Moral Underpinnings: A Psychological Perspective

The contrast between populist rhetoric and NVC can be further understood through psychological theories of emotion, morality, and intergroup conflict. Moral Foundations Theory, for instance, sheds light on why populist messaging is so potent at a gut level. Jonathan Haidt and colleagues’ theory proposes that human moral reasoning is built on intuitive foundations such as care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation (with liberty/oppression sometimes added) (Haidt, 2012). Different political or cultural groups emphasize different foundations. Populist movements (especially right-wing variants) often appeal heavily to foundations of loyalty (e.g., patriotism, defending the in-group), authority (respect for a strong leader who will restore order), and sanctity (protecting the nation’s purity or traditional values), alongside a narrative of betrayal by elites (violating fairness or loyalty) and oppression of the common people by those in power. These moral appeals trigger deep emotional responses: outrage at the corrupt elite (those who violate fairness), fear and disgust toward perceived outsiders (those who violate sanctity or security), and righteous anger that the “true people” are not being respected (violations of loyalty or authority structures). In short, populist communication succeeds by activating moral intuitions that resonate strongly with its audience’s identity and worldview. Once activated, these moral-emotional responses can bypass deliberative reasoning—the audience’s intuitive “elephant” charges ahead before the rational “rider” catches up (Haidt, 2012).

How does NVC engage with this moral-emotional landscape? Notably, NVC deliberately avoids language of good vs. evil or us vs. them that maps onto those divisive moral foundations. Instead, it appeals to universal human needs, which might be thought of as underlying the moral foundations but not tied to any one ideology. For example, rather than arguing on the level of “your loyalty to group X is misplaced,” an NVC approach would dig into why loyalty to X matters – perhaps the need for belonging, identity, or security. Those needs are human universals, even if their expressions differ. In practice, this means an NVC-inspired dialogue might sidestep the usual triggers of partisan defensiveness. A populist supporter fulminating about “protecting our country’s purity from outsiders” is clearly operating within a sanctity/loyalty moral frame. Confronting them head-on (“That’s racist and wrong!”) will likely provoke an ego-defensive reaction or even deeper entrenchment – their moral foundations feel attacked. By contrast, an NVC-informed response might be: “It sounds like you’re really worried about our community’s safety and continuity. I also care about safety – that’s a basic need we all share. Can we talk about what specifically feels threatening to you, and how we might address that concern without harming innocent people?” This kind of response implicitly acknowledges the moral concern (safety, stability) but reframes it as a shared need rather than an us–them battle. It also avoids validating any factual falsehoods or bigotry – there is no agreement that “outsiders are ruining us,” only an attempt to hear the fear beneath that statement. In doing so, NVC may help to disarm the moral intensity that populist rhetoric exploits, channeling it into a conversation about needs and solutions that includes all stakeholders’ humanity.

Another relevant psychological concept is affective polarization, which is the mutual dislike and distrust between opposing political camps. Populist communication, with its demonization of “others,” greatly exacerbates affective polarization – followers are encouraged not only to disagree with opponents, but to actively hate and fear them. As discussed, social media echo chambers further reinforce this by rewarding strident partisan content. Affective polarization is partly fueled by what psychologists call ego-involvement or identity threat. When political viewpoints become deeply tied to one’s identity and sense of self-worth, any challenge to those viewpoints feels like a personal attack or an existential threat to one’s ego. Populist narratives often heighten this effect by framing politics as an existential battle to save one’s way of life or group. In such a charged context, facts and logic alone rarely persuade – people will reject information that contradicts their group narrative because accepting it would threaten their identity (a phenomenon related to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning). Here, NVC’s emphasis on empathy and non-judgmental dialogue can mitigate ego threat. 

By explicitly removing blame and personal attacks from the equation, NVC creates a safer psychological space for discussion. As one expert notes, “People don’t change their beliefs when judged and told they’re stupid or misinformed. That just shuts them down… Focusing on feelings and needs – showing human care – helps the other person be more open to a different perspective” (Seid, 2023). In essence, NVC tries to lower the defenses that come from feeling one’s identity is under siege. By first demonstrating understanding (“I hear that you’re really worried, and you value honesty in politics,”) we signal that we are not out to humiliate or annihilate the other person’s identity, which often de-escalates the confrontation. This approach aligns with conflict psychology findings that acknowledging the other side’s emotions can reduce perceived threat and open the door to persuasion. There is even emerging evidence that encouraging empathy across party lines can reduce affective polarization. One study found that when people were led to believe empathy is a strength rather than a weakness, they showed a greater willingness to engage constructively and less partisan animosity. NVC cultivates exactly this stance, treating empathy as a powerful tool rather than a concession.

A related factor is the role of ego and face-saving in public exchanges. On social media, debates often devolve into performative contests where each side seeks to “win” and save face in front of their audience. Admitting error or changing one’s view under those conditions is rare because it can feel humiliating. NVC’s philosophy addresses this by focusing on observations and personal feelings/needs instead of accusations. This minimizes the threat to the other person’s ego. For example, saying “I felt hurt when I read your comment” is less face-threatening than “Your comment was ignorant.” The former invites the person to consider your perspective without directly attacking their integrity. Over time, such small differences in phrasing and approach can create a climate where dialogue is possible without each participant staking their ego on rigid positions.

Lastly, consider the element of emotional regulation. From a psychoanalytic perspective, destructive populism operates through a perversion of the psychological function of containing: instead of processing and detoxifying destructive emotions, it amplifies and idealizes them. Democratic structures lose their capacity to absorb and transform aggression, resulting in escalating cycles of emotional escalation. Populist dynamics trigger a regression to a so-called “paranoid-schizoid mental state,” characterized by splitting, projection, and idealization. This undermines the integrative capacity of a democratic society and fosters black-and-white thinking and scapegoating. A symbiotic-destructive fit emerges between populist leaders and their followers, based on destructive narcissism. This relationship is sustained through continuous emotional escalation and mutual reinforcement of omnipotent fantasies. (Zienert-Eilts, 2020)

Populist content deliberately raises the emotional temperature – outrage, fear, and indignation are stoked because they drive engagement. NVC, by contrast, implicitly encourages slowing down and recognizing emotions rather than being driven by them impulsively. In practicing NVC, one learns to self-connect (“What am I feeling? What need is causing that feeling?”), which can prevent reactive outbursts. This self-empathy is crucial online: taking a moment to name “I’m furious at this tweet because I need honesty in our leaders” can prevent firing back an insult. It’s a form of emotional intelligence that could dampen the cycle of provocation and counter-provocation that populists rely on to keep issues inflamed. Indeed, the NVC approach to handling misinformation or extremist remarks often starts with self-empathy and calming oneself before engaging. Only then can one approach the other with genuine curiosity, rather than reactive rage. This emotional self-regulation aspect aligns with broader psychological research suggesting that interventions which reduce emotional arousal (like mindfulness or perspective-taking exercises) can facilitate more rational discussion even on contentious topics. By integrating these psychological insights, we see that NVC is not a naïve “just be nice” formula, but rather a strategy that operates on well-founded principles of human emotion and cognition: it seeks to redirect moral passion toward understanding, reduce ego defensiveness, and replace high-arousal anger with mindful dialogue.

NVC as an Antidote to Manipulative Populist Discourse

Having outlined both the nature of populist communication and the fundamentals of Nonviolent Communication, we can now draw the connections more explicitly: How could NVC serve as an antidote or counterstrategy to manipulative populist discourse, especially on social media?

First, consider the content level of communication. Populist manipulative discourse thrives on misinformation and oversimplification—sweeping claims that blame social ills on targeted groups or opponents (e.g., “The immigrants are stealing your jobs” or “The media always lies to you,”). An NVC-informed approach to countering such messages would not simply retort with facts (though fact-checking is important); instead, it would reframe the conversation around the underlying issues and needs. For example, instead of trading barbs about whether immigrants are “good” or “bad,” an NVC counter-discourse would probe: “What is the fear or hardship driving this anger toward immigrants? Is it economic insecurity? Lack of trust in the system? Let’s address that.” By doing so, it deactivates the scapegoating narrative. The focus shifts to the real causes of suffering (such as job loss due to automation or inequality) and the real needs (stable employment, community safety) that demagogic slogans have oversimplified or obscured. NVC’s emphasis on observations and needs can cut through propaganda by continually steering the discussion back to concrete reality and human concerns. It’s harder for manipulative rhetoric to take root when the audience is trained to ask, “What is the speaker feeling and needing? What am I feeling and needing?” This critical yet compassionate stance inoculates people against being swept away by slogans, as they learn to listen beneath the surface message. In fact, educational programs in media literacy and conflict resolution sometimes incorporate NVC principles to help students detect when language is manipulative or inflammatory, and to respond by seeking clarification and shared concerns rather than reacting in kind. By promoting habits of pausing and reflecting on needs, NVC serves as a kind of cognitive vaccine against disinformation and emotional manipulation.

Second, at the relational level, NVC aims to humanize the “other” and break down the us-versus-them mindset that populists promote. Populist leaders often explicitly dehumanize their opponents or scapegoats, calling them animals, traitors, or criminals—language that morally disengages their followers from feeling any empathy toward those targets. This dehumanization is a common precursor to verbal (or even physical) violence. NVC directly counters this by emphasizing the humanity of everyone involved. Practitioners of NVC seek to “attend to the humanity of everybody involved,” even while standing up to hate speech (Seid, 2023). In practical terms, this could mean that when faced with a hate-filled comment online, an NVC practitioner might respond with empathy (e.g., “It sounds like you’re really angry and hurting; I want to understand what’s behind that feeling”) rather than with an insult. This approach serves two purposes: it demonstrates to onlookers that the targeted person is not responding with hate (thus preserving their dignity and disproving the aggressor’s caricature), and it can sometimes surprise the aggressor into a more genuine conversation. There are anecdotal accounts of social media users successfully de-escalating trolls or bigoted commenters by responding with unexpected kindness or curiosity—tactics that align very much with NVC philosophy. Conversely, meeting fire with fire on social media (though understandable) often reinforces each side’s negative stereotypes. Therefore, NVC offers a toolkit for those who want to engage persuasively rather than resort to name-calling, helping to reduce the vicious cycle of escalating rhetoric.

Furthermore, NVC offers a mode of discourse that could help redefine what “free expression” entails on social media. The phrase “truly free expression” in this context suggests that current online discourse, though nominally free, is constrained by toxicity and manipulation. In an NVC-inspired vision, free expression would not merely mean anyone can post anything (the status quo, which often leads to harassment and misinformation). Rather, it implies a communication culture where individuals feel free to speak authentically—expressing their real feelings and needs—without fear of being attacked or cynically manipulated. Paradoxically, when populists weaponize “free speech,” the result is often less freedom for vulnerable voices (who are bullied into silence) and a polluted information environment that hampers everyone’s ability to speak truth. NVC can be seen as a remedy to this, encouraging norms of respectful listening and speaking that make it safer for all voices to be heard. 

For example, an online forum moderated with NVC principles might encourage users to phrase disagreements in terms of “I” statements about their own feelings and needs, rather than accusatory “you” statements. Over time, this could foster trust even among users with divergent views, because they see that expressing an opinion won’t result in immediate personal attacks. In short, NVC aligns freedom of expression with responsibility of expression – the idea that we are free to say what we want, but we choose to do so in a way that acknowledges the humanity and dignity of others. This resonates with long-standing arguments that a healthy public sphere requires norms of civility and empathy to truly function in the common good, not just to maximize individual liberty to offend. 

It is worth highlighting some concrete examples where a more nonviolent style of communication has made a difference. For instance, experimental studies in political psychology have shown that framing issues in terms of the other side’s moral values or shared human experiences can reduce polarization. One study found that when liberals and conservatives each reframed their arguments to appeal to the other side’s core values (e.g., arguing for environmental protection in terms of patriotism and purity of nature, rather than purely in terms of care/harm), persuasion increased significantly. This principle is akin to NVC’s approach of finding a need that underlies both sides’ concerns. Another example is dialogue programs that bring together people from opposite sides of contentious issues (such as abortion and gun control) in carefully facilitated conversations. Those programs, often inspired by empathic communication techniques like NVC, report that participants come away with reduced animosity and often find unexpected points of agreement or at least understanding. Similarly, on social media, initiatives like #ListenFirst or certain depolarization groups encourage users to practice reflective listening in comment threads. These micro-level efforts align with NVC’s core tenets and have shown anecdotal success in de-escalating what would otherwise be inflamed shouting matches. 

From a critical discourse analysis standpoint, introducing NVC into social media discourse could also be seen as a form of discursive resistance. Instead of allowing populist demagogues to set the terms of debate (with their loaded language and fear-driven frames), citizens trained in NVC can subtly shift the discourse. For example, when a populist tweet declares “Group X is the enemy of the people!” an NVC-informed counter-message might redirect the focus: “I hear anger and a longing for fairness. How can we ensure everyone’s needs are considered without blaming one group?” This kind of response doesn’t directly confront the claim on its face (which might be futile with committed partisans), but it introduces an alternative narrative centered on inclusivity and understanding. If enough voices respond in that vein, the public narrative gains complexity – it’s no longer a one-note story of blame; it’s also a story about empathy and problem-solving. In the long run, such discourse could erode the appeal of purely manipulative messages, as people see a path to address grievances without vilifying others.

Challenges and Critiques: Can NVC Work Against Online Populism?

Scalability and Context

NVC was initially conceived for interpersonal or small-group communication – for example, mediating between individuals in conflict or fostering understanding in workshops. The online world of mass communication and rapid-fire posts is a very different context. One critique is whether the painstaking, time-consuming process of empathetic dialogue can be scaled to thousands or millions of people interacting on social platforms. Engaging even one hostile commenter with genuine NVC empathy can demand patience and emotional labor; doing this across an entire “troll army” or deeply polarized forum might seem infeasible. 

Furthermore, text-based social media strips away tone and nonverbal cues, which are essential for conveying empathy. Without face-to-face interaction, attempts at NVC might be misinterpreted. In essence, can the NVC approach survive the chaotic, decontextualized, high-speed environment of Twitter or Facebook? Some suggest that for NVC to be scalable online, platforms would need to support it structurally – for instance, by providing guided prompts that encourage users to reflect (“What are you feeling? What do you need?”)before posting, or by highlighting posts that exemplify constructive communication. Such design changes are speculative and have not been widely implemented. Thus, in the current setup, NVC practitioners will likely find themselves swimming against a strong current of algorithmic and social incentives that favor short, incendiary content over thoughtful dialogue. This doesn’t invalidate NVC, but any realistic strategy must pair NVC with broader reforms (e.g., digital literacy education, platform moderation policies, community norms) to have a large-scale impact.

Asymmetry of Intentions

Another limitation arises from the imbalance between sincere dialogue seekers and manipulative actors. NVC assumes a baseline of goodwill – that if one expresses honestly and listens empathically, the other might do the same. But what if certain populist communicators (or their digital foot soldiers) have no interest in good-faith dialogue? Many populist leaders are adept propagandists who might see empathetic outreach as a weakness to exploit, rather than reciprocate. In online spaces, coordinated troll campaigns or extremist groups may deliberately feign personal grievances just to hijack the conversation. Engaging them with empathy might not always defuse their agenda; it could even provide more attention or a veneer of legitimacy to their hateful ideas if not handled carefully. Critics argue that NVC could be naïvely ineffective in such cases – akin to “bringing a knife to a gunfight,” or worse, bringing an open heart to a knife fight. It’s a genuine concern that must temper our expectations: NVC is not a magic wand that transforms every interaction, and some actors will simply not respond in kind. 

Advocates of NVC counter that even if die-hard extremists or trolls do not change, empathic engagement can still have positive effects on the wider audience. A compassionate response to hate speech, for example, might not convert the hater, but it shows bystanders an alternative to hate, potentially preventing the spread of toxicity. Also, NVC does not forbid setting boundaries. Rosenberg himself clarified that NVC is not about being permissive or a “doormat.” One can combine NVC with firm resistance – for instance, empathizing with someone’s anger while refusing to allow abuse in a discussion (Seid, 2023). In extreme cases, protective actions (like moderation, muting, or even legal measures) are necessary; NVC distinguishes the protective use of force (to prevent harm) from punitive or retributive force. Thus, while NVC urges understanding the unmet needs driving even hateful behavior, it does not require tolerating harm or giving manipulators endless platforms. The key is to try nonviolence first, and resort to stricter measures if dialogue truly fails or safety is at risk.

Accusations of Moral Equivalence or Neutrality

A nuanced critique comes from activists and scholars who worry that the ethos of NVC – in avoiding judgmental labels like “right” and “wrong” – might slide into an amoral stance that equates oppressor and oppressed. For example, if an immigrant-rights advocate uses NVC to dialogue with a xenophobic populist, some might accuse them of “normalizing hate” or not firmly condemning a harmful ideology. There is a tension here between empathy and justice: how do we empathize with a person’s feelings and needs without appearing to excuse or legitimize dangerous beliefs? Rosenberg’s approach would say we never excuse harmful actions – rather, we separate the person (who has human needs) from their action or belief (which we can vehemently disagree with). As NVC educators emphasize, “this is in no way to excuse or condone behaviors that hurt others!” (Seid, 2023). 

It is possible to hold someone accountable while treating them as a human being. Yet, in the public sphere, this nuance can be lost, and there is a risk that calls for empathy are misused to downplay the legitimate grievances of victims. NVC practitioners must be mindful of power dynamics: empathy should flow in all directions, but it must not become a tool to silence the less powerful by constantly demanding they empathize with their abusers. In practical terms, applying NVC in the populism context means walking a fine line – empathizing with, say, the economic anxieties that might fuel racist populism, without validating the racism. Some critics from feminist and anti-racist perspectives have pointed out that telling marginalized people to use NVC toward those who harm them can come off as tone-policing or burden-shifting (i.e., putting the onus on the targets of harassment to be “more understanding”). 

This critique is important: any advocacy of NVC in the populist context should clarify that NVC is voluntary and context-dependent. It is a tool for those who choose to engage; it should not be a cudgel to force civility on the oppressed while the oppressor goes unchecked. In dealing with populism, perhaps the best use of NVC is by allies and moderators – those not directly targeted by the hate – who have the emotional capacity to bridge divides, rather than expecting immediate empathy from someone under attack. Additionally, there may be situations where a more confrontational approach is necessary to stop harm quickly, even if it’s not “polite” or nonviolent in tone. NVC does not claim to replace all forms of political action; it is one approach among many, best suited for communication and relationship-building, and less applicable to urgent law enforcement against incitement or structural changes to social media algorithms.

Effectiveness and Evidence

Finally, a pragmatic critique: Do we have evidence that NVC works in reducing populist influence or changing minds at scale? While NVC has a considerable track record in conflict resolution, mediation, and educational settings, there is limited empirical research on its direct impact in political persuasion or online discourse moderation. Applying NVC principles systematically to social media debates is a relatively new and experimental idea. Early indicators, as mentioned, come from small-scale dialogue experiments or individual anecdotes of depolarization. These are promising but not yet definitive proof for society-wide change.

Therefore, some observers might label NVC in this context as idealistic – a noble ideal but one facing steep odds against the structural forces of polarization and human cognitive biases. To address this, proponents suggest more pilot programs and interdisciplinary research: for example, combining NVC training with digital literacy education, or conducting controlled experiments to see if NVC-informed interventions in comment sections lead to improved outcomes (e.g., more civil tone, greater willingness of participants to engage with opposing views, reduced hate speech). If such research finds concrete benefits, it will bolster the case for broader adoption. Until then, NVC’s role in countering populism remains a plausible theory needing further validation. At the very least, it provides a vision of how communication could shift from destructive to constructive. Whether that vision can be realized will depend on experimentation, cultural change, and perhaps most importantly, individuals’ willingness to practice empathy in adversarial situations – a truly challenging task.

Conclusion

Populist movements have demonstrated a formidable ability to sway public discourse through manipulative communication – simplifying complex issues into moral dichotomies, amplifying fear and resentment, and leveraging social media algorithms to create echo chambers of anger. This article has analyzed how such “communication populism” operates not just as political messaging, but as a challenge to the very fabric of democratic dialogue and mutual understanding. In response, we have explored Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication as a potential antidote: a way to infuse public discourse with empathy, clarity, and respect for truth. NVC encourages a shift from accusation to inquiry, from diatribe to dialogue – focusing on the feelings and needs behind words, and on solutions that acknowledge everyone’s humanity.

Integrating insights from political communication research, we noted that populist discourse is often emotionally charged and negative, thriving on conflict and division (Engesser et al., 2017; Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2023). NVC, by contrast, works to defuse negative emotions through empathetic listening and to prevent reflexive defensiveness by removing blame (Rosenberg, 2003). From psychology, we saw that populist rhetoric taps into moral intuitions and identity needs (Haidt, 2012); NVC offers a way to address those same needs (like security, belonging, fairness) without the antagonism and scapegoating, thus potentially undercutting the appeal of the demagogue’s message. Empirical examples on social media illustrated the dire need for such approaches: content analyses show populists inundate platforms with fear-based messaging (Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2023), and user studies link these patterns to growing polarization and a chilling effect on open dialogue (Matthes et al., 2023; Amnesty International, 2020). In this light, an approach that can break the cycle – by engaging opponents with understanding, changing the tone of conversations, and re-humanizing those who have been othered – is a welcome prospect.

However, we have also critically examined whether and how NVC can overcome this challenge. We acknowledged that NVC is not a cure-all or a quick fix. Its application in the sprawling, impersonal battleground of the internet faces hurdles of scale, bad-faith actors, and misperception. It demands skill, practice, and changes in platform design or community norms to truly flourish. Moreover, empathy-driven communication must be carefully balanced with accountability and justice: showing compassion for individuals does not mean validating harmful ideologies or foregoing the protection of those targeted by hate. Rosenberg’s own writings remind us that NVC can be a powerful tool, but that sometimes a protective force is necessary. Thus, “nonviolent” communication in the context of populism should not be mistaken for passive acceptance; rather, it is an active and courageous choice to fight fire not with fire, but with water – cooling tempers, inviting reflection, and standing firmly on values of dignity and truth.

For academics and policymakers concerned with the rise of populism, the NVC framework offers fruitful avenues for further exploration. It bridges disciplines: from critical discourse analysis, it borrows the idea of challenging dominant narratives (here, challenging the narrative of enemy-making by substituting one of mutual understanding); from psychology, it leverages what we know about emotion and identity to craft communication that connects; from media studies, it raises questions about how platform ecosystems might be tweaked to reward empathy over outrage. Future research might test communication interventions inspired by NVC in online forums or deliberative democracy projects. Educators might incorporate NVC training to cultivate a new generation of digital citizens skilled in compassionate communication. Such steps could gradually build resilience in the public against manipulative rhetoric: an audience that no longer reacts blindly to fearmongering, but pauses to ask, “What is really being felt, and what is needed?”

In conclusion, the struggle against populist manipulation is not only a political or informational one, but fundamentally a communicative one – a struggle over how we speak and listen to each other in the public sphere. Nonviolent Communication, as Rosenberg envisioned it, is both a philosophical stance and a practical method that affirms the possibility of “speaking truth in love,” even amid discord. It invites each of us to reclaim our voice from the dynamics of anger and deceit, and to exercise a freedom of expression that is truly free – free from violence, free from coercion, and free to seek common humanity. While challenging to apply, Rosenberg’s approach is a counter-cultural antidote to populism’s poison, reminding us that empathy and honest connection are not naïve ideals but potent forces for social healing. 

In a time of hardened divisions, listening without judgment and speaking without malice may be revolutionary acts. As we refine strategies to curb the excesses of populist communication, we should not overlook the transformative power of nonviolence in communication itself. This antidote works not by suppression, but by elevation: elevating the conversation to a plane where manipulation falters and understanding begins.

 

(*) Claudia Fritsch is a Psychologist and Psychotherapist in Stuttgart, Germany. 

 

References

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Jan Kubik is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University and Professor Emeritus at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (UCL), which he directed in 2015-17.

Professor Kubik: Populism in CEE Is Rooted in Deep Feudal Structures Rather Than in the Communist Past

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In a compelling interview with ECPS, Professor Jan Kubik challenges one of the most persistent assumptions about Central and Eastern Europe: that right-wing populism is primarily a legacy of communism. Instead, he argues, its roots lie in far older social hierarchies. “Many people say populists are stronger in East-Central Europe because of communism. I think that misses the point. It is much deeper. It is actual feudalism… long before communism,” he explains. Professor Kubik outlines how these deep-seated structures—traditional authority patterns, weak middle classes, and historically delayed modernization—interact with neo-traditionalist narratives deployed by parties like PiS and Fidesz. The result, he warns, is a durable populist ecosystem requiring both organic civic renewal and, potentially, a dramatic institutional reset.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this wide-ranging and analytically rich conversation, Distinguished Professor Jan Kubik—a leading scholar of political anthropology and Central and Eastern European (CEE) politics—offers a profound rethinking of the foundations of right-wing populism in the region. Drawing on insights from two major European Commission–funded projects, FATIGUE and POPREBEL, Professor Kubik challenges one of the most enduring explanations for the region’s democratic backsliding: the legacy of communism. Instead, he underscores that the roots run far deeper. As he succinctly puts it, “Many people say populists are stronger in East-Central Europe because of communism. I think that misses the point. It is much deeper. It is actual feudalism, in a sense, and the structural composition of these societies… which started forming long before communism.”

The interview traces how this neo-feudal inheritance—characterized by hierarchical authority structures, traditionalist cultural norms, and weakly developed middle classes—interacts with the neo-traditionalist narratives mobilized by contemporary right-wing populists. Professor Kubik describes neo-traditionalism as a deliberate attempt to revive or manufacture tradition, often through cultural engineering, to legitimize a new political–economic order. In this context, parties like Fidesz and PiS sacralize national identity through education, religion, heritage, and memory politics, exploiting societies in which, as he notes, “authority is… male-chauvinistic… and that person simply belongs there… because this is how it is.” These deeply rooted cultural logics, he argues, help explain why symbolic interventions resonate so powerfully in Poland and Hungary, but far less in an urbanized and secularized Czech Republic.

Professor Kubik also provides conceptual clarity on the interdependence of political and economic power in right-wing populist regimes. POPREBEL identifies a “neo-feudal” regime type marked by weak business actors, strong political actors, and legitimation through neo-traditionalist, anti-market narratives. Programs such as Poland’s 500+—which “dramatically reduced childhood poverty”—are not merely economic interventions but cultural–political tools for consolidating authority.

A significant part of the interview concerns the durability of these systems. Professor Kubik warns that entrenched cultural substructures and polarized value systems make right-wing populism unusually resilient. This resilience is reinforced institutionally through the capture of courts, media, and cultural institutions—producing distinct patterns in Poland, Hungary, and Czechia.

Finally, the interview concludes with a discussion of democratic renewal. Professor Kubik’s twin proposal combines “organic, society-wide work”—especially civic education from an early age—with, on the other hand, “a dramatic institutional reset.” While the latter may sound radical, he argues that moments of deep crisis sometimes require systemic reinvention, citing Charles de Gaulle’s 1958 constitutional overhaul as precedent.

Taken together, Professor Kubik’s insights offer a compelling and ambitious reframing of populism in CEE—not as a post-communist aberration, but as a twenty-first-century expression of far older structural legacies.

Professor Jan Kubik co-supervised two major European Commission–funded projects: FATIGUE, which trained 15 doctoral researchers, and POPREBEL, which developed new interpretations of the rise of right-wing populism.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Jan Kubik, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Two ‘Neos’ That Define a New Populist Order

Professor Jan Kubik, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism feature centrally in your recent work. How do these concepts refine or challenge the dominant ideational and strategic approaches to populism, and to what extent do they constitute a genuinely new regime type in Central and Eastern Europe?

Professor Jan Kubik: First of all, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be able to share some of our work. As for the question, this project really emerged through a dialogue between our regional expertise and broader theoretical debates. When I began the project, I was directing the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL in London, and when we were writing the grant, we were approaching it explicitly from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, several of us were already immersed in the literature on populism, so the project developed—perhaps in the best possible way—through a conversation between theory and deep regional knowledge.

From the very beginning, like many others, I was fascinated by the question of what drives these developments: is it culture or economy? A number of major studies suggested that both matter, but that cultural factors seem somewhat more decisive—people often felt their worlds were being disrupted or threatened by modernity. Importantly, it wasn’t only those in dire economic straits; sometimes people who were economically comfortable still felt profoundly unsettled.

So, we were always thinking about how to combine these elements. I come from anthropology, trained in both symbolic and economic approaches, so I’ve always believed we need explanations that are complex—multi-factoral but not overly complicated.

We then began looking closely at tradition as a key resource for right-wing populists and came across the concept of neo-traditionalism. We took this to mean two things: first, the revival of a tradition that had been lost or weakened, and second, the deliberate top-down manufacturing of tradition—less organic than is often assumed, involving a form of cultural engineering.

As the project developed, we brought in a group of economists from Corvinus University in Hungary, and we began studying Hungary as an extreme case of tight interdependence between political and economic actors. This soon led us to literature on neo-feudalism. Suddenly we had two “neos”—a nice symmetry, as it turned out—and then the idea came together.

I’ve always been interested in legitimacy: how systems, including economic ones, are justified through cultural constructs. And we had a kind of eureka moment: neo-feudalism describes a specific arrangement of political and economic power, and neo-traditionalism is what legitimates it—a deliberate revival or construction of national tradition. In Poland, for example, this is deeply intertwined with a particular vision of Catholicism.

Hungary and Poland were especially valuable cases because right-wing populists were fully in power, allowing us to observe what they actually do once governing. The Czech Republic offered a different configuration—populist, but less aggressive and often described as “technocratic populism.”

So, drawing on what I know best, these three countries form a sort of analytical triangle. And that, in brief, is how the project took shape.

Culture Is Built—But Never Free From Material Conditions

Your framework draws on “embedded constructivism” and Weberian cultural–materialist analysis. How does this interpretive tradition alter the way scholars should conceptualize the relationship between populist discourse, historical memory, and everyday meaning-making among citizens?

Professor Jan Kubik: I come from anthropology, and I studied sociology and even some philosophy in Krakow before I left for the United States. I’ve always been a constructivist, but I have continually tried to understand more deeply what is really meant by that. The idea, of course, is that humans create those entities we then take for granted as natural—nations, genders, ethnicity, and all those things, including populism in some sense. And that’s fine, but I always had a kind of residue of materialism. Perhaps my studies of state socialist systems and the political economy of state socialism—which I even taught for a while—made me sensitive to the economic dimension. It is obviously central to human societies.

Weber was also a lasting influence, and he was always stretched, as he put it, between explanation and interpretation, which I found important and evocative. Eventually, I came across—or perhaps coined—the concept of being a “materialist constructivist,” based on reading other scholars. The idea is clearly present, for example, in the work of Michèle Lamont, the Harvard sociologist. When she writes about differences between working-class cultures in the United States and France, she reminds us that while we may be focused on culture, we cannot forget the material base of the situation: different economic systems, different types of capitalism, and so on.

So, I thought, yes, this is exactly what we want to do as well. Our expertise—except for our economic colleagues—is mostly on the cultural side, but we should never lose sight of the economic dimension. This concept is simply another way of bringing those two elements together.

Polarized Subcultures as Engines of Persistence

Traditional catholic event in Poland – First Holy Communion for eight year old children. Photo: Sebastian Czapnik.

In your POPREBEL conceptual architecture, you rely on three analytical oppositions (supply/demand, culture/economy, challengers/incumbents). How do these axes interact in explaining the durability—not merely the rise—of right-wing populism in CEE?

Professor Jan Kubik: Here, I am still a bit on thin ice. We are not fully there yet, but it is a great question—thank you for it. I don’t think I have ever articulated it so clearly to myself as you just did. But here are my hunches, based on several years of work—so these ideas may evolve, but for now I would say this: There is much more to be done on the demand side. There are cultures or subcultures in these societies that are conservative, traditional, traditionalist—however you would call them. And the supply side consists of political entrepreneurs, activists, intellectuals, and even some artists who lean conservative and at some point realize: oh, society is not entirely liberal, left, or centrist—there is a huge chunk of people who will listen to us because they already think this way, more or less spontaneously, due to historical circumstances.

So, I would say that this existing demand, these existing subcultures, indicate a certain durability of the phenomenon. Once this process gets going, it may be more difficult to change than we assume. In practice, this means that in Polish society—and to a large degree in American society as well—you have tremendous polarization. What emerges from this culture war is more polarization. We may be stuck with societies polarized not only politically but also culturally, at a deeper level. That is the key factor on the demand side.

Culture and economy I already explained, so I will just add that because the question of legitimation is at stake, cultural mechanisms need to be carefully observed. Whenever right-wing populists come to power—this is empirically clear—they are interested not only in taking over elements of the political system, such as the judiciary, but also in controlling institutions of cultural production: school programs, museums (I have done a lot of work on historical memory and museums), and not only historical museums but all kinds of them. They try to control theater productions, and they move into film production to ensure that more “patriotic” movies are created, and so on.

As for incumbents versus challengers—yes, we need to examine both, but for us, incumbency is crucial because in our region we have the best cases of these political formations holding full political power. We can actually observe what they do once in office. In other places, throughout Western Europe and elsewhere—India may be somewhat similar—you have parties entering coalitions and sometimes mellowing down, as observers say is happening with Meloni: once in government, she tones things down a little. Orban did not tone anything down, nor did Kaczynski. Modi does not tone down much.

Then there is Brazil, a fascinating case, because Bolsonaro never managed to get control over the judicial system—particularly the Supreme Court—which produces an interesting and somewhat scary parallel with the United States, where the court is not at the end of a telephone line from the White House, but is, everyone would agree, much more sympathetic to the president than it was under previous administrations.

Populism as a Product of Long Cultural Trajectories

In “Populism Observed,” you argue that Czech and Polish populisms are “tantalizingly different.” To what extent do these divergences stem from long-term political-cultural trajectories as opposed to variations in political agency, party organization, or media ecosystems?

Professor Jan Kubik: This is my favorite part of the project at the moment, because of my interest in history and the fact that I see myself as a historical institutionalist, so I always want to understand longer trajectories—how different institutions or cultures and subcultures emerged over time. I also have some personal links: my mother was born in Prague, and my great-grandfather was Czech, so I always felt somewhat comfortable between Czech and Polish cultures, and now I have a chance to work on it more systematically.

When you dig into the basic trajectory—and the main interest for us, because we accept, as you said, the ideational definition of populism—the thing of great interest, starting from the Polish side, is the role of religion, in this case Catholicism. But when you cross the mountains to the Czech side, you are in a completely different reality, going back to the 14th and 15th centuries—five centuries of a completely different trajectory in the interaction between religion and other cultural and political factors, mostly because of Hussitism and Jan Hus, a kind of proto–Martin Luther about a century earlier. This sets the whole field of what I call national self-understanding—who are we as Czechs versus who are we as Poles?—on very different trajectories over time.

The story is more complex, but every bit of evidence we look at adds to the picture. I am a believer in falsification—I would be happy to find evidence that contradicts my hypothesis—but almost everything falls into place, one bit after another. A quick example: in the Polish case, Romanticism in the first half of the 19th century is central. Poland is partitioned, disappears from the political map, and everyone agrees that Romanticism is at the center of Polish self-understanding: the heroic imagination, always fighting, always on the barricades, having a mission—messianic or, as one of my professors called it, “missionic”—the idea that we can save Europe from itself. Kaczynski says such things: that true Catholicism exists in Poland, that the West is decadent and has forgotten its true roots in Christianity, and that Poland can rescue Europe from itself. There is nothing like that in the Czech case.

The Czech trajectory leads to, in two words, more moderation and stronger liberalism. So, Babiš, the Czech populist who is back in power again, is much more restrained. He is much more attuned, shrewd in that sense. He is a good politician; he knows he cannot go too far. He cannot go as far as Kaczynski or Orbán and remain credible. I think he understands that will not work. And just two days ago, one of my Czech colleagues sent me a short Czech text—an interview with Orbán, who said something like: Look at the Czechs; they are less crazy than we Hungarians, but they also have doubts about supporting Ukraine. The first part of the sentence shows that Orbán recognizes that these more sober-minded Czechs also share some positions with him, but it comes from a very different cultural background.

Why Czech and Polish Populisms Reshape Institutions Differently

Participants march through the streets during Prague Pride, a major LGBTQ+ parade and celebration, in Prague, Czech Republic, on August 12, 2017. Photo: Madeleine Steinbach.

Your analysis highlights the personalistic nature of Czech populism (embodied by Babiš) versus the ideational, party-driven nature of Polish populism (PiS). How do these distinct modalities shape patterns of institutional transformation, particularly in relation to state capacity and judicial independence?

Professor Jan Kubik: I can only say something about correlations—and yes, we keep reminding our students that correlation is not causation. I do not understand the mechanism, honestly, yet. But if you observe that the Polish judiciary is decimated and cannot recover even now, two years after the defeat of PiS, there is no good way of doing that. I follow the debates among scholars of the law, activists, and people who are now in charge of the legal part of the system in the new government. And still the Supreme Court, to some degree—and the Constitutional Tribunal completely—are controlled by PiS appointees. You hit that famous dilemma: should we use undemocratic methods to undo damage to democracy done by undemocratic forces? The idea is that maybe we shouldn’t, because then we behave like them—and so on; this is a well-recognized dilemma. In the Czech case, Babiš never attacked, never tried to take over the courts. He did attack them rhetorically, but he didn’t create anything like the situation that exists in Hungary, where Orbán completely controls them, or in Poland.

So, the one thing that I can say is that now that we have quite a bit of data, one thing I know for sure is that Czechs think about the map of the political, socio-political reality in very personalistic terms. In our analysis, in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczyński doesn’t come up, even. You have to be a bit of an expert—everybody in Poland knows—but people seem to accept his preferred way of existing in the public domain, which is behind the scenes. So, in the Polish case, it is, as you said, PiS—the Law and Justice Party—that people associate with the center of the system. And then you see this difference in the situation when it comes to, say, the judiciary.

I don’t know what the link is. I just observe that this is how the two systems are different. Maybe the answer is simply that the reformist program of Polish right-wing populists is more ambitious and more comprehensive. The Czech project is more self-constrained. It’s a hypothesis.

Why Polish and Czech Resentments Diverge

How might the conceptual networks emerging from online ethnography and semantic network analysis help explain why anti-elite resentments in Poland crystallize around specific institutions (PiS, the Church, PO), while in Czechia they coalesce around abstract concerns such as manipulation or state incompetence?

Professor Jan Kubik: This analysis is based on about 140 very long interviews in Czechia and in Poland. We use this sort of custom-made method of semantic network analysis, which allows us to create visualizations of networks of concepts, with the intensity of connections marked. This method was developed in collaboration with mathematicians, and it was a great kind of multi-method situation where they were saying, “Look, we know how to do those abstract things, but we need to know the context.” It was really refreshing to hear that from mathematicians: you are the experts on the region; we have to keep going back and forth between the data, your reading of the interviews in the original languages, and our modeling. So, this was great, and that is the product of it.

If I go back to the interviews: in both the Czech and Polish cases, one thing that is very clear is that people’s concerns are, to a large degree, divorced from the heated, polarized political–ideological war that we often observe on the front pages of newspapers—observed by people coming from abroad or even internally by those who study these things. From what we got in our interviews—and here is the very important thing—we didn’t ask, “What do you think about X?” or “What do you think about Kaczyński?” or “What do you think about populism?” Nothing like that. We assumed we would talk about life and see what comes out organically. Eventually, we decided to tighten it a bit, and the slogan organizing the interviews was well-being, which very quickly led people to talk about problems. And I think it’s very useful. We don’t tell them how something is related to populists or not. Then sometimes it pops up—whether populists can help them or not.

But what comes across is this pervasive sense that the state—its institutions, particularly when it comes to healthcare—is very, very poor. The service is very poor. People are very unhappy. And they are unhappy across the board with every political formation in some cases—quite a few of them. They look critically at the previous government, Donald Tusk’s government (which is now back in power). They look critically at PiS’s government. They seem to be very much concentrated, as people have observed from time to time in other studies, on their everyday problems.

I was thinking about what happened in the United States now, with that Democratic wave a week ago or so—particularly Mamdani. He was so effective because he talked to people about everyday problems. Affordability. That was very much what we found in those interviews.

So, at this point, I’m thinking—because this analysis is not closed; the project is still in progress—that there is an interesting disjoint, some kind of discrepancy, between the layer of national political discourse and what is really in people’s heads, what really bothers them. And there are, of course, moments of connection, and there are some influences, but the most striking feature for me is this disconnect between those two layers of culture, however you would call it.

Mapping the Political–Economic Fusion Behind Populist Power

The POPREBEL work suggests that right-wing populist regimes fuse political and economic power in a neo-feudal pattern. How does this pattern differ from classical patronalism in post-communist states, and what empirical indicators best capture it?

Professor Jan Kubik: Let me go into a bit of splitting hairs, because I’m very proud of this. This is not me; this is our colleagues—economists, particularly one, István Kollai, but also others. I was involved, though; those were fascinating discussions.

We started with the basic idea—there is a huge literature on the relationship between the business or economic domain and the political domain. So, we started with the basic logical typology: you have the situation where business is dominant and politicians are subordinate; you have the situation where they are equal; and then you have the situation where it is the other way around.  So those are the three possible types.

Then we looked at—and this is what the economists came up with—the second dimension, which you can describe as the form of legitimacy. So again, what returns is this kind of culture–economy combination. And they divide it into three again. There is the kind of secretive private interest—there is no effort to produce any form of legitimacy by whoever is in power. Second, there is the situation where there is justification through invoking market competitiveness, which is a kind of neoliberal solution or developmental state, or something like that. And then the third one is legitimacy through, by and large, neo-traditionalism combined with anti-market—what they called anti-market counter-movement.

And this you see clearly in Poland with Kaczyński, where they increased their distribution dramatically, this famous program, 500 plus for every child and then the second child, which dramatically reduced childhood poverty. So PiS has a serious success on its hands. And of course, Orbán is doing the same thing through other specific methods.

So, if you take those 3 by 3, then you generate nine types, which is maybe a little bit too much, but I don’t want to go through all of them. But here’s where feudalism, neo-feudalism, or as we sometimes call it, feudal capitalism, sits: it is weak business actors and strong political actors—one of those three types of the relationship—and legitimation is through neo-traditionalism and counter- or anti-market movement.

You can imagine that if you look logically at those nine cells, you will have different combinations of those features. Some are purely abstract, logical categories, but some are very much in existence. Just one more example: if you have strong business actors and weak political actors and a secretive tendency toward private interests, this is what is often called crony capitalism.

Why Insecurity—Not Inequality—Fuels Populist Appeals

How do you interpret the interplay between economic insecurity (transition fatigue, inequality, regional dualization) and the moral/cultural appeals mobilized by right-wing populists? To what extent is the economic dimension still under-theorized in populism studies?

Professor Jan Kubik:  Yes—this first emerged in our discussions across the whole team, which ranges from economists to people doing theater studies and similar fields. Again, the significance of cultural production came up repeatedly. And also resistance to thriving populists often comes through cultural institutions.

It actually came from the economists first that much of the economic interpretation of the rise of right-wing populism focuses on inequality. They quickly said, early in the project, that we need a concept broader than that. We do not deny the significance of inequality, but insecurity is a broader concept. Insecurity can be generated by malfunctioning political institutions, or the perception that institutions are malfunctioning, or certainly by invoking cultural fears. What is interesting is that economists—not only our economists, but others studying these phenomena—are increasingly taking seriously not just material interests, but also interpretations of the world. The stories about the world matter.

So that’s when the concept of insecurity emerged, and right-wing populism enters with its story of neo-traditionalism. A story many people tell—it’s just that ours uses slightly different words. This is the story that if we go back to our genuine culture, back to our roots, we will make our country great again. We will return to our normal state of being. It was disrupted by liberalism, by modernization, by ideas about gender equality, equality for LGBTQ+ people, the existence of more than two genders—all of this.

You can clearly see the reactions to those developments. The return to “two genders”—the president issuing a document declaring that there are only two genders, against everything we know from anthropology, my own discipline. Many cultures clearly recognized more than two genders. And I don’t even know what to do with that. Because in American universities today, people get fired for saying the president may be wrong on that.

So, yes, bringing back traditions to increase security—that’s the essence. Again, it’s not very original; many have noticed it. But we are trying to show how it works in some detail.

Deep Social Hierarchies—not Communism—Explain Populist Resonance

Tourists visit the medieval wooden church during the Easter Festival in Hollókö, Hungary, a UNESCO World Heritage village, on April 12, 2009. Photo: Attila Jandi.

Your chapters on education, religion, and heritage document a systematic attempt by populists to ‘sacralize’ national identity. What structural conditions allow these symbolic interventions to resonate so deeply, particularly in Poland and Hungary?

Professor Jan Kubik: By structural conditions we mean a certain state of society. I see pretty strong differences between Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. So, let’s put the Czechs aside quickly, because this is the society that is most urbanized and among the most secular in the world, which has a historical explanation. Structurally, this is a society with many people who do not belong to any organized religion and who are situated in the middle range of the class structure. It’s a very middle-class society—by and large. It is a little bit like England. You don’t have those classical East European landscapes of very poor villages, but rather a lot of small towns—little urban spaces—a bit like England, which, of course, has its historical roots.

And then in Poland, you have a very different story. Until World War II, this was a very peasant society, and then you have an enormous change in social structure after the war with the total elimination of the Jews, who were important in the middle range of society, and the movement of the country 300 kilometers or so to the west, and then the influx of many people from the east—more of a peasant society. Long story short, some sociologists use the term peasantism or neo-peasantism, which I take as an anthropologist and sociologist to mean attachment to a specific, rich, but distinct culture based on, for example, a very different notion of authority. That authority is kind of male-chauvinistic; “samodzielny” (autocrat) is usually the man at the center—like in extensive kinship systems—at the top of the local social pyramid. And that person simply belongs there. If you ask people, “Why is this person there?” the answer is, “Because this is how it is. This is how things should be.” So, it is a very different idea than the liberal one. In Weberian terms, it is traditional versus bureaucratic, instrumental, or rational. Liberal democracy is based on transparency, clear criteria. It’s boring, dull, mechanistic—but it is a system that generates much more accountability and transparency. In this traditionalistic system, no, this is not the concern.

And if you describe it like that, it is very close to the populist idea of the volonté générale. Once you recognize what people want, and you are with them—one of them—then that’s it. A few more steps, and we are in paradise.

In Hungary, the way I understand it, it is somewhat similar to Poland, but there are studies showing that during the interwar period, Hungary was strongly leaning fascist. It had a very strong fascist movement—also in Poland, but not as strong. Studies show a very strong tradition in the countryside. Hungary is also very polarized: you have the massive agglomeration of Budapest—very urban culture—and then countryside with a few smaller towns. And that culture is somewhat similar to the Polish culture of traditionalism, traditional forms of authority, traditional gender norms, and so on.

So, that’s the structural precondition. Many people say populists are stronger in East-Central Europe because of communism. I think that misses the point. It is much deeper. It is actual feudalism, in a sense, and the structural composition of these societies, historically, which started forming long before communism. If modernity is defined by the emergence of a middle class and specific upper classes—experts, specialists, bourgeois layers—all of this came to this part of the continent much later than in the West. And that happened much earlier than communism.

Renewal Requires Both Organic Education and Institutional Reset

And lastly, Professor Kubik, in your forthcoming work on countermeasures, you discuss possible remedies for democratic erosion. What forms of democratic renewal—institutional, economic, or cultural—are most promising in reversing neo-feudal and neo-traditionalist tendencies in CEE?

Professor Jan Kubik: The Anatomy of Right-wing Populists was based on the work of 15 doctoral students who we trained in the program. So, this is something we’re proud of—that there’s a younger generation of scholars working through this. That final chapter in the book comes from their work.

But in brief, I think there are two main avenues of reform or re-democratization. One is—and no matter how I approach it, I always end up in the same place—education. But then the question is, what kind of education? Well, civic education, and it needs to be organic. My obsession is that “organic” means really embedded in society, with a lot of people engaged in it, and it has to start early. My wife teaches kids at various levels, and she always tells me that the kids are very attuned to descriptions of social justice, democracy—they have a sense of fairness. There’s fertile ground for teaching the basics of democracy very early on. But that requires a large, massive program.

On the other hand, and at another level, you have to find a way to reform the institutions that have been damaged—maybe as quickly as possible. Poland is a perfect case. I’m trying to write about it now, time permitting. You have the Prime Minister from liberal-conservative center; that’s what PO is under Tusk. It’s a complex coalition which is a problem in itself. On the other hand, this popular right-wing populist formation. They are divided roughly as follows: the Prime Minister is a liberal democrat; the President is a right-wing populist; and the Supreme Court, along with parts of the legal system, remains dominated by right-wing populist appointees. What do you do with that after two years?

It is very difficult to change things through reform using regular democratic methods. The price you pay is a very unhappy society. Particularly women—young women—because women, and rightly so, brought Tusk to power. I mean, not only them, but they were very instrumental. They mobilized against the most draconian abortion law in the EU. And Tusk cannot do much for them, because part of his coalition is a conservative party—anti-radical populist, right-wing populist, but conservative. So, he is stuck; nothing happens. His approval rating is dismal. In some polls, it was 30% or something. It’s even lower than Trump.

And I had this somewhat crazy idea—I even tried to raise it with some people at meetings in Warsaw. It didn’t go very far, because it does sound extreme, but it came out of sheer desperation. What do you do after eight years of right-wing populist rule that has so thoroughly damaged the institutions? You have to restart the system. Begin with a new Constitutional Convention—literally reboot the entire framework. Practically, it doesn’t seem doable, but when I looked for historical precedents, I turned to Charles de Gaulle in 1958, when he shifted France from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic. It was a moment of deep crisis—the Algerian War, multiple political breakdowns—and the parliament was, in his view, ungovernable. He won a referendum decisively and created the system France has today, a strongly presidential republic. He reset the system—if the word “reset” means anything, that was it.

So, my idea is: organic, society-wide work on the one hand, and, on the other, a dramatic institutional reset. But that didn’t happen, and the system simply muddles through.

Dr. Damon Linker—Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Senior Fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center, columnist, and author of The Theocons and The Religious Test

Dr. Linker: Trump Is the Worst Possible Example of a Right-wing Populist

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In this interview for the ECPS, Dr. Damon Linker delivers a stark assessment of Trumpism’s place in the global surge of right-wing populism. Dr. Linker argues that Donald Trump is “the worst possible example of a right-wing populist,” not only for his ideological extremism but for a uniquely volatile mix of narcissism, vindictiveness, and disregard for constitutional limits. Central to his warning is Trump’s assault on what he calls the democratic “middle layer”—the professional civil servants who “act as a layer of defense” against executive tyranny. By “uniting the bottom and the top to crush that middle layer,” Dr. Linker contends, Trumpism pushes the United States toward an authoritarian model unprecedented in its modern political history.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Damon Linker—Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Senior Fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center, columnist, and author of The Theocons and The Religious Test—offers one of the clearest and most sobering analyses of Trumpism’s evolving place within the global wave of right-wing populism. Across the conversation, Dr. Linker advances a central contention: Donald Trump is “the worst possible example of a right-wing populist,” not only because of ideological extremism but because of a personally distinctive mix of narcissism, vindictiveness, and strategic opportunism that intensifies the authoritarian tendencies inherent in contemporary populist governance.

A recurring theme in the interview—and the one that speaks most directly to the headline—is Dr. Linker’s argument that Trumpism seeks to eliminate what he calls the “middle layer” of democratic states. In his formulation, liberal democracies depend on “informed, intelligent, educated… people in that middle layer of the state” who carry out laws, uphold norms, and prevent the executive from “acting like a tyrant.” Trump, by contrast, “tries to unite the bottom and the top in an effort to crush that middle layer—leaving only ‘the people’ and the strongman running the country.” This dynamic, Dr. Linker warns, places the United States closer to the logic of authoritarian rule than at any point in the modern era.

The interview situates Trumpism within both historical cycles and global patterns. Dr. Linker argues that the Republican Party is returning to an older “rejectionist” impulse rooted in its reaction to the New Deal. Yet Trump’s version is more expansive and more radical, because what the right now seeks to overturn is far larger: the post-war regulatory, administrative, and cultural state. At the same time, Dr. Linker stresses that while Trumpism shares features with “authoritarian populism” abroad, Trump himself stands out for being “personally irresponsible… rage-fueled… corrupt… [and] willing to use state power… to hurt his enemies and help his friends.”

The interview also maps the institutional consequences of this project. Dr. Linker shows how Trumpism simultaneously directs bottom-up grievance and top-down coercion to pressure universities, law firms, media, bureaucratic agencies, and cultural institutions. Some actors, he notes, resist, while others “capitulate” under threat of political or financial retaliation. The overall pattern reveals an increasingly fragmented institutional landscape marked by selective vulnerability rather than systemic resilience.

Finally, Dr. Linker reflects on the future of American party politics. If Democrats cannot adapt—by embracing a modestly populist reformism and distancing themselves from the “old, discredited establishment”—they risk long-term marginalization. Yet he remains cautiously optimistic: “As long as we have free and fair elections… my very strong suspicion is [the Democrats] will win again. We just have to be a little patient about it.”

This interview thus offers a penetrating, historically informed account of Trumpism as both a symptom and accelerant of democratic decay in the US—and a warning about what may come next.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Damon Linker, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Why Trumpism Isn’t New—But More Dangerous

Donald Trump’s supporters wearing “In God We Trump” shirts at a rally in Bojangles’ Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 2, 2020. Photo: Jeffrey Edwards.

Dr. Damon Linker, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: You argue that Trumpism expresses a “reactive rejectionism” deeply rooted in the American right’s political DNA. To what extent do you see this as a cyclical return of buried ideological impulses versus a structural transformation of the Republican coalition in the 21st century?

Dr. Damon Linker: Well, I’ve tended to side with the idea that it is something cyclical. The Republican Party responded to the New Deal in the 1930s—Franklin Roosevelt’s vast expansion of the size and scope of the federal government in response to the Great Depression. The party reacted by rejecting that expansion entirely in the name of what we call in the United States, using the French expression, laissez-faire: the notion that the government should not play a significant role in organizing and regulating our political and economic lives, and that if it gets out of the way, the economy will grow and we will see all kinds of positive developments—economically, culturally, and politically. Because the liberal left was working to expand the scope of government, the Republicans developed a program of resistance and rejection.

This remained the party’s dominant position until 1952, when Senator Robert Taft ran for president on that platform. But in the end, the party narrowly chose a different candidate that year—Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former general who helped win the European theater in World War II. He went on to serve eight years as president and adopted a more moderate position, one that enabled the consolidation of the New Deal and continued the Cold War that had been initiated by Democrats and liberals before him.

That moment marked the emergence of a more moderate, mainstream version of the Republican Party, which remained influential on and off until the immediate aftermath of George W. Bush’s presidency. I think Donald Trump represents a return to this older rejectionist form of the Republican Party—although now it rejects much more, because government and the left-liberal agenda have expanded dramatically since the 1930s. So there is much more to contest and attempt to reverse, and I think the impulse to do so helps explain some of the radicalism we’ve seen, especially from this second Trump administration over the past year.

After the Cold War: No Brake on Radicalization

In your framing, the Cold War consensus temporarily disciplined the American right toward moderation. Without an equivalent external threat today, what kinds of internal political or social incentives—if any—could exert a similar moderating force?

Dr. Damon Linker: I’m honestly not sure. My argument is that it’s a bit mysterious what such a force could be. I didn’t go into this in the New York Times essay you’re referring to, but I’m even a little at a loss about whether an external challenge—if it happened today—would have the same effect. Suppose China made an aggressive move against Taiwan and we suddenly became much more concerned about an assertive China in geopolitics. I’m not convinced the Republican Party would respond in a moderating way. At this point, it is so wedded to a kind of Trump-oriented aggressiveness and defensiveness, and to a somewhat conspiratorial and paranoid mindset, that it might meet such a challenge by becoming even more radical about the threat posed by it.

So I’m not sure. I suppose I could say that if Trump ends up being an unsuccessful president—his approval rating is already sinking quite low, and if it drops even lower than it did in his first presidency from 2016 or 2017 to early 2021—and then a Republican successor goes on to lose in 2028, there would be a very lively and rhetorically violent fight among Republicans about where to go next. Out of that struggle, and out of a desperation to win again, it’s possible the party could move even further in an extreme right-wing direction, or it could try to combine some Trump positions—maybe anti-immigration convictions—with a more moderate tone and attitude on other issues.

I’ve long thought that if the Republican Party combined an anti-immigration stance with genuine support for healthcare reform that enabled more people to have access to affordable care, that would be a very potent and powerful combination. But the party has long paired certain cultural right-wing positions with a real hostility to taxes and regulations—a strongly pro-business point of view. And that combination limits its total electoral appeal, so I think they would have to adjust that somewhat.

Populism from Below, Authoritarianism from Above

Donald Trump delivers a victory speech after his big win in the Nevada caucus at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, flanked by his sons Eric (right) and Donald Jr. (left) in Las Vegas, NV. Photo: oe Sohm.

Many scholars describe democratic backsliding as driven by institutional capture from above and mass polarization from below. How do you interpret the interaction between Trump’s top-down attacks on institutions and the bottom-up radicalization of the Republican base?

Dr. Damon Linker: I affirm the view that combines them both. Trumpism—understood as the American form of right-wing populism we see across much of the world today—brings together exactly these two dynamics. What we have in the United States, as in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia, where potent right-populist parties and leaders have emerged, is often this same combination: grassroots, everyday voters who are deeply angry with and distrustful of the elite establishment that runs the institutions of public life, and a populist leader who comes along and seeks to champion that discontent and suspicion.

That leader—whether Trump, Erdoğan, Modi, Orban, or others—wins power and then uses the office as a kind of wrecking ball to destroy, radically reform, or undermine the elite system governing the country. We’ve seen this clearly in Trump’s approach during his second term over the past year, as he has sought to channel the desires of everyday voters by dismantling large parts of what we call the administrative state—the career bureaucratic civil servants who run the government across administrations, regardless of whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

Trump has tried to fire these people, push them out, or exert total control over them, insisting they conform to his vision of how to run the country “in the name of the people”—the people he claims stand with him against the elites. One way to visualize this is to imagine the base of voters at the bottom, the strongman leader at the top, and the professional civil service in the middle. What Trump tries to do is unite the bottom and the top in an effort to crush that middle layer—leaving only “the people” and the strongman running the country.

And that is very dangerous, because it resembles a dictatorship or authoritarian system far more than a liberal democratic one. In a democracy, you specifically want informed, intelligent, educated people in that middle layer of the state, running things day to day in a responsible way and serving as a buffer—a layer of defense for the rule of law and constitutional norms that prevents the person at the top from behaving like a tyrant. Trump, like many strongmen, is trying to remove that crucial middle layer.

Trumpism Beyond Trump

You describe Trumpism as a long-term phenomenon, not merely a personalistic moment. What, in your view, are the essential ideological and sociological components of Trumpism that will endure after Trump himself exits the stage?

Dr. Damon Linker: The things that I think are likely to fade a little bit are the extreme examples of Trump’s corruption. I do think that corruption is going to increase in the government—probably with both parties but especially among Republicans—simply because Trump has shown that you can be corrupt and get away with it. Now, Trump, as a long-term corrupt figure in our economy and politics—someone who’s a developer and has worked historically in New York City, where the building trades developers are quite corrupt, and he’s been doing it for his entire career of about a half century—I think he’s a kind of outlier, very extremely corrupt, and he’s been very eager in this second administration to do anything he can to enrich himself, his business, his family, and friends.

So, we’ll see some of that, but I think it probably won’t continue at quite the level we’ve seen with Trump. What will continue is the dynamic I’ve already been talking about: seeking to empower the executive branch of our politics by justifying its power in terms of defending “the people.” This kind of populist account of power suggests that it’s acceptable for the leader of the government to act in very extreme ways that seem to transgress the rule of law because it is supposedly done in the name of defending what the people say they want.

In substantive policy terms, the Republican Party will remain very hostile to immigration. It’s also going to be much more skeptical of free trade agreements than it used to be. That doesn’t mean the chaotic imposition of tariffs that Trump has attempted—tariffs he is already backing away from a little because they are hurting our economy so severely. But there is room for a more responsible form of protectionism in our political economy, one that doesn’t offshore supply chains with quite the enthusiasm we’ve seen over the last two or three decades since the 1990s, here and around the world. That trend will continue.

I also think there will be a continued tendency to combine a pro-business economic policy with social conservatism—a long-standing Republican mix since Ronald Reagan. And it will be carried out with more extremism, as Trump has done: very forcefully using the power of the state to combat examples of cultural leftism in the country—in universities, in the corporate sector—while rewarding corporations or businesses that are either explicitly anti-left-wing or simply unpolitical and willing to play ball with, or do business with, the president.

Those businesses will be rewarded with approvals for mergers, a more favorable regulatory environment, and similar benefits, whereas those that continue to push what we call wokeness—a kind of cultural left position—will face a more severe regulatory environment, more meddling, and a generally more difficult time from any Republican president who happens to win the office.

The War on the Administrative State

Demonstrators gather at the US Capitol on President’s Day to protest the actions of President Trump’s administration and billionaire Elon Musk in Washington, D.C., on February 17, 2025. Photo: Rena Schild.

Your essay in the New York Times highlights the role of the administrative state as a primary target of rejectionist conservatism. Is this assault driven more by ideological hostility to bureaucracy or by a desire to dismantle professional constraints on executive power?

Dr. Damon Linker: I would say both. There is an ideological opposition to the administrative state that has been developed by certain think tanks in the United States,
probably most prominently the Claremont Institute in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Over the last few decades, they have developed a pretty elaborate ideological critique— a critique of and attack on the administrative state—claiming that it is an undemocratic imposition on the Constitution, that the Constitution doesn’t even conceive of. It doesn’t make any provision for it, and so in that respect, it’s wholly illegitimate and should be dismantled.

But at the same time, there is a sense that the administrative state slows down and hinders the will of the president, unless it can be seized by the president and used as a kind of hammer or some other tool to advance his agenda. So what you get on the right these days in this country is this severe critique of how the administrative state has existed and functioned until now, combined with a very confused proposal about what to do about it in the future. Some people say it should simply be gotten rid of—get rid of the administrative state—which, frankly, is very unrealistic. Every modern nation has what we call an administrative state: career civil servants who make the government function and allow it to do what we ask of it, which is regulate our lives, keep us safe, make sure drugs are safe, make sure airplanes don’t fall out of the sky, make sure our cars don’t blow up when they get in a car accident—these kinds of things.

But some on the right are smarter in saying that what we actually need to do is make sure the administrative state doesn’t only help left-wing politicians when they’re in power. Their critique is that when there’s a Democrat as president, the administrative state helps them fulfill their agenda. When there’s a Republican, they do the opposite and drag their feet. They don’t do what the Republican president asks because they don’t agree with it, since
most of the people who work as career civil servants tend to be Democrats. So they come up with excuses not to fulfill the Republican agenda.

So, these people on the right say what we need to do is not get rid of the administrative state; we need to take control of it—fire the left-wing people who work in it and appoint right-wing people who will both advance our agenda when we’re in charge and, secondly, do the opposite to the left when the Democrats return to power. In other words, if the Democrat wants to do a certain thing, these new right-wing civil servants will drag their feet and not implement the proposals. This is a recipe for very wild, big swings from president to president. One advantage of an administrative state—or a career civil service— is that it creates a kind of stability across administrations. Whether you have a Republican president, a Democratic president, a Republican again, a Democrat again, the government as a whole moves a little to one side or the other, but remains anchored in the middle, never veering too far in one direction or the other.

But if all the career civil servants get fired when there’s a new party in charge of the presidency and are replaced with ideologues who agree, you’re going to get something much more volatile, where the whole government shifts 180 degrees in direction. That is a recipe for chaos and a real lack of stability in our system, I fear.

Samuel Francis’s Roadmap to the New Right

Samuel Francis and the “Middle American radicals” have gained renewed attention in analyses of the new right. How central is Francis’s worldview to understanding the intellectual architecture of contemporary Trumpism?

Dr. Damon Linker: The way I usually read prominent intellectuals of the past is a little subtle. You’re talking about a guy named Samuel Francis who died in 2005. He wrote some important essays around 1991–1992 in which he—in retrospect—proposed something that looks a lot like Trumpism. Basically, he articulated a kind of right-populist and right-wing nationalist program, arguing that Republicans needed to begin allying with middle American, middle-class workers against left-leaning bureaucrats and cultural institutions—the elite institutions of American culture. So, as I was saying earlier, you have the bottom and then the populist at the top on the right going to war against the people in the middle—the bureaucrats, the civil servants, and the leaders of universities, the corporate sector, the arts, and cultural institutions. That sounds a lot like a roadmap for Trumpism.

Where I want to hesitate a little bit is that I’m not making the claim that Sam Francis directly caused Trumpism or directly influenced it that much. I think it’s more that he saw a possibility for the right after the Cold War, and he turned out to be correct, although it took a few decades for the Republicans to find a champion in Donald Trump who could actually enact this style of politics and succeed with it politically. Pat Buchanan attempted it with Sam Francis’s influence in 1992, when he challenged George H.W. Bush’s re-election campaign.
He didn’t do that well, although he did get 38% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary that year, which damaged George H.W. Bush. It’s one reason he lost the presidency to Bill Clinton that year. But Pat Buchanan wasn’t able to turn it into that successful of a program to actually win the primaries and take over the Republican Party then. But Donald Trump has succeeded in enacting something like Sam Francis’s ideas, and that is something we need to recognize.

Who Stands Up to Trump—and Who Capitulates?

Students gather for graduation ceremonies on Commencement Day at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 29, 2014. Photo: Dreamstime.

The Republican Party’s anti-institutionalism now encompasses the judiciary, intelligence services, universities, and media. Which institutional arenas, in your view, remain most resilient—and which are most vulnerable—to coordinated illiberal pressure?

Dr. Damon Linker: I don’t know if I can say that there are any sectors as a whole that can remain resilient. Obviously, the Democratic Party is going to be independent of this and resilient. But beyond that, what you see instead is that within certain segments of the culture, the country, and the economy, certain firms, law firms, and universities are doing better at resisting than others. Some law firms have capitulated to Trump and reached deals with him. Others have said they will not reach deals, and so far it’s not entirely clear—to me at least—
that they’re being punished very severely, so maybe that resistance will continue and even expand.

Similarly with universities: some have capitulated very quickly to Trump in return for having their funding restarted, because Trump cut off a lot of funding for grants in the sciences and medicine. Large, well-endowed universities with prominent medical schools have been particularly vulnerable, like my own University of Pennsylvania, because the Trump administration has been able to shut off grants to these schools, which then gives the president leverage to try to extract concessions from them. But some universities, like Harvard, have tried to fight back, and there are others as well. They will probably continue trying and, hopefully, ride out the rest of the term. There are only three years to go in the second Trump administration. We’ll see. If somehow J.D. Vance becomes president after Trump, or if Trump dies or is incapacitated and Vance takes over during this term and then runs for re-election in 2028 and wins, in those longer-term scenarios it will obviously be harder for these institutions to keep resisting.

But for the moment, again, I wouldn’t say it’s any entire sector. It’s more selective—
people and institutions within many different sectors that are trying to stand up to him, at least a little bit.

Rebuilding the Center-Left for a New Era

You have written extensively on the erosion of the political center. What might a plausible reconstruction of a centrist or “middleground” politics look like in a post-Trump environment, and what forces—if any—could bring it into being?

Dr. Damon Linker: That’s a hard question. I don’t have a great answer for it, because I don’t, frankly, know. My instincts tell me that the road back to power for a kind of center-left coalition has to involve more populism as well. The center-left cannot remain parties of the old, discredited establishment that the right-populist parties have been so successful in targeting. There is obviously a lot of organic irritation and anger with those institutions of the establishment. In order to get a little of that populist energy for themselves, the center-left can’t just say, “Vote for us, and we’ll keep everything the way it’s been for the last
30 to 40 years,” because there aren’t enough people who want to keep things as they’ve been for the last 30 or 40 years. So, if you cede that populist critique and don’t adopt it for yourself, you’re giving ammunition to the populist right to keep winning.

So, the center-left has to acknowledge that this anger against the establishments of our liberal democratic systems is legitimate, that these institutions and the people who run them have made mistakes, they’ve gotten things wrong, and they need to not only acknowledge these errors but come up with proposals to make it better—to fix them, to reform pretty dramatically the way our systems work. Make them more nimble, less bogged down in bureaucracy and red tape, as we put it in one of our favorite metaphors here. And again, try to steal some of that populist energy for the center-left, to, in effect, say: “Yes, I hear you. You’re not happy with the present. Neither are we. We want the government—we want these institutions—to work better for your sake, for all of our sakes.
Trust me, put me into power, and we will make things better. We will make the government run more efficiently and make your lives improve. What we don’t want is those irresponsible people on the other side of the spectrum who really have no positive program at all—they just want to wreck everything. While that might be tempting because you’re angry, the end result is going to be that our lives will get worse, and the government will become even more inefficient, even more incapable of fixing things.”

That’s something like a message that could resonate, but of course you need charismatic, very effective politicians to actually say that in a way that gets people excited. That probably means people who are not the same people who are currently running the show, who clearly are not very compelling to a lot of voters these days.

The Most Extreme Variant of Populism

Former US President Donald Trump with a serious look as he delivers a speech at a campaign rally held at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, PA – August 2, 2018. Photo: Evan El-Amin.

Trumpism increasingly blends populist grievance with state-driven coercion, such as mass deportation plans and politicized bureaucratic purges. Does this represent a uniquely American synthesis, or does it echo the global pattern of “authoritarian populism” seen elsewhere?

Dr. Damon Linker: In general, it’s continuous with what we’re seeing in other countries. There’s a range. Trump is particularly personally irresponsible and incapable of truly grasping policy details. So, like Meloni in Italy, for example, is a right-wing populist, but her governance has been relatively moderate. If other countries in Europe elected right-populist parties and they governed like Meloni has been governing in Italy, I wouldn’t be that worried about it. I would figure the old neoliberal center-right is now gone—it’s extinct—and instead we have a populist right in countries around the world. I don’t really agree with a lot of those things, but it’s okay; it’s an alternative to the center-left, and that’s now what the alternative ideological configuration is going to look like going forward. We can work with that.

Trump is distinct because he’s so personally narcissistic, so rage-fueled. He hates his enemies. He’s willing to use state power and transgress norms and the rule of law in order to hurt his enemies and help his friends. He’s so corrupt. In all of these ways, he’s sort of the worst possible example of a right-wing populist. So it’s mainly these personal things about him that make him uniquely bad.

So the big question for me is if a J.D. Vance ends up taking over after Trump and winning—how does he govern? How is he different from Trump? Is he more thoughtful, or is he actually worse because he holds the same views but is competent and able to aggressively prosecute their agenda in a way that Trump can’t quite pull off? Because, for example, Trump thinks it makes sense to impose enormous tariffs on every country in the world overnight, as he did last April. I don’t think Vance would ever have done anything that stupid and reckless. If that’s true, then Vance wouldn’t have become as unpopular as Trump has become. So that’s one question that I wonder and worry about.

A Stress Test for the American Party System

Torn American flag with Democratic and Republican party symbols, representing political division in the United States. Photo: Dreamstime.

And lastly, Dr. Linker, if Trumpism remains ascendant even after scandals, governance failures, and electoral defeats, what does this suggest about the adaptive capacity—or decay—of the American party system?

Dr. Damon Linker: It means that the Democratic Party is in trouble. Now, it’s not in trouble in the way the Republican Party was in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt won re-election in 1936 with 60.8% of the vote, and Democrats controlled the US Senate with 75 seats out of 96, and the House of Representatives—if I recall correctly—334 to 88. Absolutely lopsided margins in favor of the Democrats, where the Republicans almost looked like they were going out of business.

The Democrats today can still come close to winning. It’s very, very narrow in Congress right now—only 3 or 4 seats separate the two parties—so that means the Democrats can almost win, and they could win again. They could win in the midterm elections next year; they could win the presidency in 2028. If they lose in these elections again, that would mean that they’re in trouble. But they probably are not going to lose in a landslide that signals they have to fundamentally change. It would mean they have to adjust their message in ways like I’ve been advocating in some of the earlier things I said.

So, as long as we have free and fair elections—even if the populist-right Republican Party is winning these elections—we still have the possibility of the Democrats winning at some point in the future, and my very strong suspicion is they will win again. We just have to be a little patient about it.

The Athens Polytechnic Monument covered with flowers during the 2019 commemoration of the 1973 student uprising against the Greek junta in Athens, Greece. Photo: Antonios Karvelas.

November 17th: The Rise of the Far-Right as a ‘Youth Trend’

by CommentariesExtremism & RadicalisationHomeVoice of Youth

In this powerful reflection for ECPS – Voice of Youth, high school student Emmanouela Papapavlou warns that the rise of the far right is not a “youth trend” but a symptom of collective amnesia. The memory of the Polytechnic uprising—once a symbol of resistance to dictatorship—has grown hollow through ritual repetition, even as democratic backsliding accelerates across Europe, the US, and Greece. Papapavlou describes how everyday indifference and frustration quietly nourish extremist ideas, while pockets of young people fight back through music, art, and political expression. Her message is urgent: democracy erodes not when violence erupts, but when society forgets what unfreedom feels like. Memory, he reminds us, is not a burden—it is our first line of defense.

By Emmanouela Papapavlou

Every year, the same story unfolds… wreaths, school speeches, the same faded posters we barely notice. A ritual repeated, yet it barely moves us. The Polytechnic uprising, instead of warning us about the fragility of freedom, is often handed down as compulsory material. And so, the deepest wound of modern Greek history becomes just another “anniversary.”

Yet, precisely at a time when democracy worldwide is under threat, the Polytechnic should shake us more than ever.

In Europe, parties with fascist roots are entering governments. In America, authoritarian leaders are gaining unprecedented support. In Greece, the far-right is comfortably returning to public life. And still, the memory of that uprising leaves so many indifferent.

Everyday scenes reveal a harsh truth: indifference, frustration, and social decay fuel the rise of extremes. In quiet, almost unnoticed moments, the past comes alive: forgotten junta supporters chatting in neighborhood barbershops as if no time has passed, fascists and ex-junta members teaching outdated, dangerous ideologies to Greek children. This is not just about contemporary Greeks, nor a “lost segment” of society. It is a collective phenomenon: disillusionment breeds extremes, whether leaning right or left.

Silence in the face of looming threats is not innocent, it is complicity. Yet some young people refuse to stay silent. They turn to music that tackles social and political issues such as rap music, they write lyrics and stories, produce podcasts, murals, exhibitions, or small performances. Through these acts, they revive memory and keep resistance against darkness alive. The generation of the Polytechnic rebelled and showed us the way: how dictators fall, and how united people claim their rights. It is our duty to remember the fallen and the fighters of that bloody uprising and to understand what it takes to keep democracy alive.

Here lies the core message: the rise of the far-right is not “a youth trend.” It is a warning that society has begun to forget. Forgetting what unfreedom means. Forgetting how easily institutions once taken for granted crumbled. Forgetting that democracy does not die suddenly, it dies when we become accustomed to darkness.

The Polytechnic is not merely a monument of the past. It is a test: it will either remind us of what we risk losing, or we will watch history rewrite itself while we only hear the silence around us.

Indeed, memory is not an obligation. It is a shield, a defense against the darkness that threatens democracy. Remaining passive is easy. The hard part is seeing the bigger picture: Europe drifting back toward dark ideas, Greece flirting with amnesia, a world exhausted from losing and still keeping vigilance alive.

Memory is not merely duty. It is our first line of defense.

 

Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Gender, Migration and Racisms at Queen’s University Belfast.

Dr. Vieten: Dutch Progressive Liberalism Is Rather Cosmetic as Fractured Far Right Gains

by Editor’s ChoiceHomeInterviews

In an interview for the ECPS, Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten offers a sharp sociological reading of the 2025 Dutch elections, arguing that “progressive liberalism appears rather cosmetic, and the Dutch elections reveal a significant win for fractured far-right populist parties.” Despite Geert Wilders’ setback, Dr. Vieten stresses that the far right remains structurally resilient, with PVV, JA21, and FvD together securing 42 seats. She highlights the normalization of anti-immigration rhetoric, the co-optation of far-right frames by centrist actors, and the deepening tensions between state-centered citizenship and post-migrant identities. From femonationalism to coalition politics, Dr. Vieten situates the Dutch results within broader European trajectories of nativism, militarization, and socio-economic neglect—warning that liberal democracy risks privileging cultural cohesion over social justice.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a political landscape marked by shifting coalitions, fragmented party systems, and the normalization of far-right discourse, Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten—Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Gender, Migration and Racisms at Queen’s University Belfast—offers, in an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies’ (ECPS), a trenchant sociological analysis of what the recent Dutch election reveals about the deeper transformations reshaping Dutch and European politics. As she succinctly observes, “progressive liberalism appears rather cosmetic, and the Dutch elections reveal a significant win for fractured far-right populist parties.”

While Geert Wilders suffered an electoral and institutional setback, Dr. Vieten underscores that far-right forces have neither receded nor lost structural relevance. She notes that Wilders’ PVV secured “a similar outcome to D66 in terms of parliamentary seats—26,” and that new actors such as JA21 and FvD collectively pushed the far right to 42 seats, signaling the entrenched resilience of nativist politics. This development, she argues, stems from longer-term shifts accelerated by the pandemic—an evolution she previously theorized as “pandemic populism.”

Yet the interview also probes the paradoxical dynamics of the 2025 contest: a weakened Wilders paired with the persistent mainstreaming of anti-immigration rhetoric. Dr. Vieten stresses that the far right’s discursive power continues to shape “cultural belonging and national identity,” even when its institutional credibility falters. Simultaneously, she warns that centrist and center-left parties have often co-opted far-right frames, thereby reproducing segregationist logics while claiming to oppose extremism.

A major theme running through the conversation is the shifting terrain of citizenship, identity, and post-migrant belonging. Drawing on her earlier work on “new European citizens,” Dr. Vieten observes that the pandemic’s border closures and re-territorialization of state authority profoundly disrupted the transnational lives of minority citizens. She also highlights how post-migrant elites—such as VVD leader Dilek Yeşilgöz-Zegerius—may themselves align with exclusionary agendas, complicating assumptions about progressive identifications among minority communities.

The interview further explores the gendered politics of far-right rhetoric. Here Dr. Vieten draws attention to how appeals to women’s rights have been tactically mobilized to justify anti-Muslim policies, echoing Sara Farris’s concept of femonationalism. Liberal narratives of emancipation, she warns, can themselves reinforce racialized boundaries of belonging.

Looking ahead, Dr. Vieten situates the Dutch outcome within broader European trajectories marked by the rise of far-right parties, centrist recalibrations, and an EU increasingly driven by anti-migration and militarization agendas. Liberal democracy, she suggests, risks becoming a project “selling cultural cohesion instead of social cohesion,” unless it confronts underlying socio-economic inequalities.

This interview thus contributes a critical and timely perspective to ECPS’s ongoing effort to interpret the Dutch elections within a wider European and global context.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

A Splintered Far Right Still Sets the Tone in Dutch Politics

Election posters near the Binnenhof featuring Geert Wilders of the PVV in the foreground, The Hague, the Netherlands, October 12, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.

Despite the electoral setback for Geert Wilders, far-right parties collectively gained ground. How should we interpret this outcome in terms of the structural endurance of nativist, populist politics in the Netherlands?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: The official setback to Wilders leading the strongest party this year (2025) doesn’t change the fact that (a) he achieved a similar outcome to D66 in terms of parliamentary seats—26, and (b) other far-right “kids on the block,” such as JA21 and FvD, also saw a rise in their share of populist votes. This clearly illustrates that the far right (populist) parties have splintered yet continue to pose a serious threat to liberal, socially diverse, and inclusive societies. All three parties (PVV, JA21, and FvD) can claim 42 seats out of 150 (compared to 41 they won in the last election in 2023). This means nativist (autochthon-oriented) ideology has gained and consolidated political ground over the years, particularly after the pandemic—a development I warned about when writing on “pandemic populism” (Vieten, 2022).

To what extent do the recent results illustrate a reconfiguration of far-right populism—from an electoral takeover strategy toward indirect agenda-setting power that continues to shape public discourse on immigration, cultural belonging, and national identity?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: Though I have not followed the election campaign closely, as I do not currently live in the Netherlands, what was striking about the success of D66 and Rob Jetten—and several national and international media outlets have emphasized this—is that Jetten sold his politics with an overall positive message of “we can do it.” Dutch voters were not impressed with the performance of Geert Wilders and the last government on central issues such as housing provision and health services. In the end, the Dutch are often viewed as very pragmatic (similar to the English, as they say), and it might be the case that Wilders’ loss is an outcome of his lack of reliability in terms of policy delivery, and only to a lesser degree driven by the ideological content his far-right populist party conveys. Anti-migration policy—let’s not forget, Wilders’ coalition government resigned because he walked out on that issue—remains a sticking point. Rob Jetten’s overarching approach to what you call “cultural belonging and national identity” was to give the Dutch national flag a more positive (prideful) meaning, not always as a defense against others, but filling it with a form of socially cohesive meaning.

Post-Migrant Elites Don’t Always Align with Progressive Politics

Billboard featuring the main candidates in the Dutch elections on June 9, 2010, in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. Photo: Dreamstime.

Given your work on “new European citizens,” what do the 2025 elections reveal about ongoing tensions between state-centered citizenship regimes and the transnational identifications of post-migrant communities?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: My research and publications on European minority citizens (2016; 2018) now feel like “light years away” (Lichtjahre entfernt). It was a comparative study of three EU countries (pre-Brexit England included) that examined how hyphenated Dutch, German, and British citizens identified as European and related to the European Union. Though I interviewed Moroccan-Dutch citizens—some of them very visible in the public sphere—the general argument may also apply to Turkish or Kurdish-Dutch citizens. However, all of this was carried out pre-pandemic, and as international lockdowns and travel bans taught us, the mundanity of transnational community life was largely suspended. One of my interview partners in Germany explicitly told me that her life as a transnational—maintaining friendships and family ties in Turkey, for example—was shattered and ignored during the pandemic. Nation-states restored their authority and sovereignty over citizens’ movement and territorial borders. Between 2020 and 2022, we witnessed a strict re-territorialization of governance—perhaps a prelude to what has come since and what we see today.

When we speak about “new Europeans,” and you bring up the concept of post-migration, it seems that some minority European/national citizens have made it into the ranks of national (and even international) elites, similar to “old established Europeans.” Ideological or value orientations do not necessarily differ simply because one has a post-migration background. An interesting and perplexing example is Dilek Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, the leader of the VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), the conservative Dutch party, who explicitly stated she would not join a coalition with the merged GroenLinks/PvdA party. This means she would rather accept a coalition with far-right parties such as JA21. Yeşilgöz served as a minister in Rutte’s government and is a very experienced politician. But this tells a story of socially classed divisions within ex-immigrant and transnational communities, who do not automatically occupy a liberal-progressive or anti-authoritarian space.

Institutional Failure, Discursive Success

Wilders’ collapsed coalition appears to have weakened his institutional credibility, yet anti-immigration rhetoric remained central in campaign debate. How do you interpret this paradox of reduced governing legitimacy but persistent discursive power?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: As I mentioned before, the collapse of Wilders’ coalition discredited him in terms of reliability and triggered the recent election. Coalition building is at the heart of most Continental European countries, including the Netherlands, and—as far as I remember—it took Wilders nearly a year to form a government anyway. So, the record of being in government and in power for just a year looks quite poor. The mainstreaming (or normalization; see Vieten & Poynting, 2022) is a discursive project that has been unfolding for years—post-2008 economic crisis and with a further push post-pandemic—accelerating at a pace that makes it difficult to challenge, as the underlying socio-economic problems are not going away.

To what extent do the Dutch results reflect a broader European pattern in which centrist parties co-opt right-wing discourses—thereby reproducing segregationist and anti-immigrant logics even while formally opposing the far right?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: Well, unfortunately, it is not only conservative or center-right parties that have jumped on the anti-immigrant—e.g., anti-refugee—scapegoating wagon; center-left parties such as the Labour Party in the UK and the Social Democrats in Denmark have similarly placed anti-migration policy at the top of their agendas. That said, I would go beyond Europe here, as this reflects a broader zeitgeist and a global phenomenon. Though Brazil shifted leftward after the far right damaged the country, mainstream media worldwide continue to give center stage to far-right politicians such as Trump and follow closely the agendas they set. At some point, people may have forgotten that 15 years ago (or earlier, in the early 2000s) there was a very different spirit—embracing cosmopolitanism (albeit Eurocentric), diversity, and openness toward difference.

Returning to what I said earlier about the need to build coalitions, we will now see how Jetten bridges ideological divides, as he needs to form a coalition with three other parties, while the leader of the Dutch conservatives (VVD) has expressed her dislike for including the GreenLeft/Social Democrats in the government. Jetten might end up asking one of the smaller far-right parties, e.g., the FvD, to join. And then we will see how realistic and reliable such a coalition arrangement will be. It is not all out of the woods, and formal opposition is more of a strategy than a reflection of political will and capacity post-election.

Cosmetic Liberalism Cannot Counter Deepening Inequalities

Billboard of D66 featuring Rob Jetten with the slogan Het Kan Wel in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on October 28, 2025. Photo: Robert van ’t Hoenderdaal.

Does D66’s civic-progressive liberalism meaningfully challenge racialized boundaries of European belonging, or does it risk perpetuating a “thin cosmopolitanism” that leaves structural inequalities untouched?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: Your question speaks directly to what I mentioned earlier. The appealing persona of D66’s leader, Rob Jetten, may resonate with urban populations and those identifying as liberal-progressive in middle-class neighborhoods. Even the fact that he is openly gay (his partner originally from Argentina) is not, in itself, an indicator of anti–far-right trajectories. For years, Wilders politicized homosexuality in his rhetoric against Muslim communities, and Alice Weidel, the AfD leader, is a lesbian living with her partner in Switzerland. Therefore, an image of liberal pro-gayness does not say anything about how social cohesion will work in the Netherlands after the 2025 election.

A conservative agenda that is deemed not to tackle socially unfair living conditions in a post-migration society—such as access to housing, rising property prices, and the gap between living standards and affordability for young people—can easily slip into adopting far-right agendas of cultural cohesion. In that sense, a “thin cosmopolitanism” is not enough, as it fails to engage with the socio-economic concerns of a large segment of the population. Progressive liberalism appears rather cosmetic, and as we noted earlier, the election outcome shows a significant win for fractured far-right populist parties.

Fragmentation Masks the Growing Influence of Nativist Politics

With the rise of multiple smaller far-right parties (e.g., JA21, FvD), what does the diversification of the nativist field reveal about ideological differentiation, constituency segmentation, and the long-term resilience of the Dutch radical right?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: I think we covered some of this before. The fragmentation of the Dutch far right—and the way center and liberal parties have adopted racist far-right political agendas, e.g., anti-migration/anti-refugee rhetoric—confirms that we are facing a normalization of far-right, nativist ideologies. The fragmentation reflects nuances as well as socially and culturally classed differences, but this does not diminish the broader presence of far-right actors. We might even see a smaller far-right party joining the government, which poses serious questions for the rule of law and for how the center-right continues to adopt policy agendas set by far-right politicians. The cordon sanitaire has already been abandoned elsewhere. An important piece of EU legislation, the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, was just modified and diluted in scope and reach—and waved through with the votes of far-right parties/politicians, just this week.

Building on your research into gendered culturalism, to what extent has the strategic mobilization of women’s rights within far-right rhetoric served to legitimize exclusionary policies toward Muslim communities—thus normalizing racialized boundaries of national belonging?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: I would go beyond this argument by questioning how liberal notions of female emancipation have also played into anti-Muslim rhetoric and have not prevented the passage of generically racist legislation. The latter refers to laws banning the veil and sustaining narratives of white European supremacy. My colleague Sara Farris (2017) argues that “neoliberalism [is] a political-economic formation that institutionalizes the femo-nationalist ideology as part of the functioning of the state apparatus in order to (re)organize the productive and particularly the socially reproductive sphere” (2017: 14).

Following closely the national civic integration strategies, not only addressing Muslims, but generally migrants, Farris scrutinized data in three EU countries spelling out that Muslim women (and female migrants) are incorporated into the concrete European ‘femo-nationalist economies’ as domestic space keepers. While Muslim men (and migrants, predominantly Muslims) are constructed as outsider-threats, Muslim women are displaced into the social reproduction sphere of the different nation-state. Her argument is intriguing because it interrogates the mainstream liberal narrative that only the far right (or extremists) threatens “our way of life.” But certainly, this kind of post-Marxist analysis is not very fashionable, insisting that normal gendered belonging is already the problem as it is keeping hierarchies of exploitation untouched.

Liberal Democracy Risks Prioritizing Cultural Unity Over Social Justice

People on the street near the National Monument in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on April 14, 2018. Undocumented migrants selling shoes. Photo: Elena Rostunova.

Finally, what do the 2025 Dutch election results suggest about broader European political trajectories—especially the concurrent resilience of far-right nativism and the tactical recalibration of centrist actors seeking to contain it—and how might this interplay shape the future of liberal-democratic politics on the continent?

Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten: Like what happened in Austria and Germany where far-right parties were either coming into first place (Austria) or second (Germany) these countries managed to build coalitions, excluding the far-right for now. As I mentioned above, it now depends on how Jetten and crucial parties such as the VVD can hold their ground and compromise on a trustworthy and stable coalition. We already have far-right parties in government in Western Europe, such as in Italy, and long established in Eastern Europe, such as in Hungary. And if we think of the European Union more broadly, its anti-migration policy (e.g., anti-asylum stance) has shifted toward far-right, anti-foreigner hysteria—for example, outsourcing asylum processes—and is dominated by Angst (both in terms of real and imagined politics) of the Russian.

Accordingly, the second major theme is militarization (and its multi-billion-euro funding), which—let me guess—is undermining spending for social and cultural policies and cohesion across the EU and within European countries. The potential new Dutch government will fit this trajectory very well, as left (or socialist) visions have been rejected across the board. The problem with liberal democracy is that it continues to promote a narrative that ignores socio-economic questions of redistribution, selling cultural cohesion instead of social cohesion.

Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, attend a center-right coalition rally in Rome, Italy on March 01, 2018. Photo: Alessia Pierdomenico.

‘Patriots to Defend Our Identity from the Islamisation of Europe’: How Populist Leaders Normalise Polarisation, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceHomeJournal of Populism Studies

Please cite as:

Reggi, Valeria. (2025). “‘Patriots to Defend Our Identity from the Islamisation of Europe’: How Populist Leaders Normalise Polarisation, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). November 16, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000120

 

Abstract

This article presents the results of several studies on the communicative strategies of right-wing populist leaders in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom in 2021 and 2024. The analyses focus on Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally (Rassemblement National) in France, Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) and Matteo Salvini of the League (Lega) in Italy, and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice of Reform UK. The research explores how these leaders construct ingroup and outgroup identities through discursive strategies, whether the outgroup is defined in civilisational terms and if these narratives have evolved over time, becoming ‘normalised.’ Employing qualitative multimodal analysis, the studies incorporate Plutchik’s (1991) classification of basic emotions, Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal theory, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework for image composition. The findings suggest an instrumental use of religion to enhance polarisation, but with a notable transition from emotionally charged visual campaigns to more rationalised and institutionalised arguments, contributing to the normalisation of divisive discourse on immigration and national identity.

Keywords: civilisationism, multimodal discourse analysis, normalisation, populism, right wing

By Valeria Reggi

The discourse of right-wing populist parties in Europe has undergone significant transformations over recent years. As digital platforms become increasingly central to political communication, populist leaders have adapted their messaging strategies to reach and engage with their audiences more effectively. This work presents an overview of several studies – both ongoing and completed – on the populist discourse in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom in 2021 and 2024. It focuses on right-wing leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally (Rassemblement National) in France, Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) and Matteo Salvini of the League (Lega) in Italy, and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice of Reform UK. The aim is to explore how they construct their ingroups and outgroups and the discursive mechanisms they employ to reinforce their political narratives, with particular attention to instrumental references to religion as an oppositional divide (civilisational populism). The ultimate scope is to highlight possible trajectories towards normalisation (Krzyżanowski, 2020). In particular, the studies investigate how right-wing populist[3]leaders in France, Italy and the UK build the identity of their ingroup and outgroup and what discursive strategies they use (RQ1), if the outgroup is defined in civilizational terms (RQ2) and if it has changed and become normalised in time (RQ3).

The results show, first of all, a remarkable focus on religion as a means to define the ingroup against the outgroup, which confirms the relevance of studying populism under a civilisational lens. Moreover, they highlight some relevant shifts in the content shared on social media and official party websites between 2021 and 2024, which outlines possible paths towards the normalisation of civilisational polarisation in mainstream political debates. Although this overview involves data sets originated in different research contexts and with different objectives, and, accordingly, does not aim to present a comparison between definitive results, it suggests a possible trajectory in the communication of rightist populist parties and opens the path for further investigation on the normalisation of polarised debate.

The following section outlines the theoretical framework underpinning the research, offering insights into populism, the concept of normalisation, civilisationism, and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Section 3 provides a detailed account of the materials and methods employed in the analysis. Section 4 presents the key findings and engages in their discussion. The final section addresses the research questions directly, expands upon the discussion, and considers possible directions for future research. 

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