JakubJablonski 

COMTOG Interview with Jakub Jablonski on ‘My Memory of Us’

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Interviewed by Iván Escobar Fernández

Jakub Jablonski is the co-owner and co-founder, art director, and creative director of Juggler Games. ‘My Memory of Us‘ is a narrative-driven puzzle-adventure video game developed by Juggler Games. The game is set in a fictional version of Poland during World War II and tells the story of a young boy and girl who must navigate through a city divided into two parts: one for Jews and one for non-Jews. The game features hand-drawn art, puzzle-solving, stealth elements, and a unique memory-manipulation mechanic that allows players to change the past to solve puzzles and progress through the story. The game received positive reviews for its story and art. Overall, My Memory of Us is a touching and emotional game about friendship, love, and survival during a war.

BuryMeMyLove1

COMTOG Report on ‘Bury Me My Love’

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Galland, Martin. (2023). “COMTOG Report on ‘Bury Me My Love’.” Never Again Initiative. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 3, 2023. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0036

 

Bury Me My Love is a game about distance. It is a game which places front and center relationships between humans, how they interact, and what drives people to take a leap into the unknown and risk their lives in the hope of reaching safety. The eponymous phrase, ‘Bury Me My Love,’ is an Arabic expression to take care roughly meant to signify, “don’t think about dying before I do.” The game is inspired by but does not tell, the real-life story of Dana, a Syrian woman having left her country in September 2015.

By Martin Galland*

Introduction

Bury Me My Love is a game about distance. It is a game which places front and center relationships between humans, how they interact, and what drives people to take a leap into the unknown and risk their lives in the hope of reaching safety. The eponymous phrase, ‘Bury Me My Love,’ is an Arabic expression to take care roughly meant to signify, “don’t think about dying before I do.” The game is inspired by but does not tell, the real-life story of Dana, a Syrian woman having left her country in September 2015. Both the journalist who wrote the article on Dana’s story and Dana herself working as part of the game’s editorial team (Le Monde, 2015).

Developed by The Pixel Hunt in 2015, Bury Me My Love is a branching text-based narrative based around the story of people on the move during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. Its main characters are Nour and Majd, a young couple from Homs, Syria. The player takes on the role of Majd, having stayed behind in Syria to take care of his mother and grandfather, while his partner, Nour, goes on to attempt the journey to Germany in order to receive refugee status there. Much of the game is based on three core mechanics which impact the outcomes of choices made throughout Nour’s journey: Time; the itinerary; and finally, Nour’s own variables of morale, budget, her relationship with Majd, and what she has or does not have on her person in key moments. With this expansive and branching narrative, there are 50 different locations to go through and nineteen possible endings for Nour’s journey, with widely divergent outcomes. 

As part of the COMTOG project’s goal to bring together different but complementary voices of the field, three individuals were interviewed about the game Bury Me My Love and its subject matter. These included Florent Maurin, President of The Pixel Hunt and one of the game’s lead developers; Dr Angus Mol, a Games Studies scholar from Leiden University; and Tigs Louis-Puttick, Communications and Advocacy Coordinator for Samos Volunteers, a non-profit organisation supporting refugees and asylum-seekers on Samos. Keeping in mind the intent of the project – which was to “showcase the educational and social potential of video games relaying the realities of conflict” – I first formalised my approach towards Bury Me My Love and the interviews I conducted around two main themes. The first and most important which informed most of my questions as the interviews were conducted was the difference between authenticity and accuracy of the experience of people on the move. The second was the necessary emphasis on empathy towards people on the move and their experiences and the engagement of players in those narratives.

The discussion around authenticity is the one that is most discussed academically and theoretically in Games Studies. In this burgeoning field, scholars note that creative designers (big studios, indie developers, social media influencers) “design their versions of the past, purely or mostly, as entertainment products, where the focus is on making money through designing fun.” This becomes a three-fold issue when such actors “(1) have not traditionally been and are frequently still not taken seriously in their role in shaping our collective understanding of the past, (2) are not primarily (or at all) concerned with teaching about the past and (3), more and more, the connection many people have with the past is partly or even primarily shaped by video games, including how they learn or teach others about it” (Boom et al., 2020: 28-29). These challenges highlight the importance of bridging the gap between stakeholders beyond those in the video game-making sphere and including activists on the ground and researchers alike.

Authenticity vs Accuracy

In the interview with Dr Mol, an important theme which emerged from the conversation was the difference between authenticity and accuracy when it comes to portraying the experience of people on the move. For Dr Mol, what really interests players is this notion of an ‘authentic past’ more so than focusing on the accuracy of the past portrayed. Bury Me My Love strongly engages with the player’s sense of empathy, providing an experience that emulates the challenges, thoughts, and problems people face on the move. Of course, this experience can only go so far in accurately visualising these very issues which thousands of people faced and still face today. Part of the game’s intention, as explained by Maurin, was to replicate this sense of anxiety and distance through the text-message thread between Nour and Majd, with the player often left with information streaming in progressively, missing context until it is later explained, and no answers from Nour until a given time when she can respond back.  

In order to best showcase the sort of journey people on the move can undertake, the game developers went through numerous documentations on the subject: including testimonies, articles, news reports, and documentaries, and themselves interviewed people in refugee camps in France. Maurin comments that the first four months of production of the game were solely dedicated to documenting, reading, and watching different sources. This was in order to get a firmer idea of the game and story they wished to tell and to account for the different paths people on the move take to get to Europe. For Dr Mol, this sort of emphasis on research and fact-checking is something that has become more prevalent and noticeable in the industry in the past ten or so years. It also reflects a shift in academia with regard to video games. As Dr Mol attests, the ways to study video games and the medium, in general, have greatly advanced and evolved in recent years, and while there is still some level of disconnect between developers and academics, there is an increasing number of projects which try to bring both sides together in the research and development of games. 

One crucially important aspect brought up by Louis-Puttick is the game’s inability to truly replicate the sense of time that people on the move go experience. It is true that comparatively speaking, Nour’s (and Dana’s) journey is very short compared to the length of time now spent by people on the move in camps – where months and years go by with little to no change in their status. While the game does include both a path which discusses this major issue in the refugee camp, and an ending which does see Nour stuck in a camp indefinitely, the player does not experience these in real-time, and so this crucial part of the experience of people on the move cannot be passed on. However, the game does not shy away from portraying some of the intense hardships faced by people on the move during their journeys. Whether it is the cold realisation that death is always a possibility, or being antagonised, chased, and beaten up by a neo-Nazi group in Greece, or the lack of care shown by European authorities as they either condemn people to a camp or deport them back to Syria. 

Ultimately, what is missing the most from this report with regard to the authenticity of Bury Me My Love is a voice from people on the move and their testimony, and whether they feel as though the game reflects enough of their experience. While the game was inspired by and involved the editorial input of a person on the move, this project would have benefited far more from involving someone with the direct experience of travelling to Europe under difficult conditions. 

Empathy and Engagement

When it comes to a subject matter such as the one on the experiences of people on the move, it is difficult to discuss Bury Me My Love in terms of ‘enjoyment’ and ‘entertainment.’ Few would describe the journey undertaken by people on the move, even vicariously, as being ‘fun,’ and it was not at all in the intention of the developers to portray it as such. For Maurin, it was difficult to balance the stark tone that the game takes with the way people would cope with this experience through levity and humour. With several thousand lines of dialogue, much of the game’s focus was on the story and the characters and the ways in which they interact with the world around them as events unfold. From personal experience with the game, both main characters were truly well-fleshed-out and felt real in their emotions, thoughts, and worries for one another. Those who meet Nour along her journey also reflect a multitude of people and how they would act towards her plight.

It is difficult to assume how different players will engage with Bury Me My Love, as the game’s several endings make it so gameplay experience can wildly vary from person to person. Criticism of the game can be found on the game’s Steam (an online game distribution platform) page, where one particular comment lists that they found the game far too upbeat and treated with too much levity with regard to the subject material. When addressing feedback of that nature, Maurin comments that, while the commenter appears to be hyperbolising, it is entirely possible that they experienced the trek replicating Dana’s journey, which was comparatively easier and with fewer issues than other possible paths – which is an outlier. Dr Mol comments on this notion of making a game engaging enough for players to want to play it while respecting the subject matter enough to consider and internalise the message. In my experience with Bury Me My Love, the game is ‘entertaining’ in the sense that it does engage you with the challenges presented in front of Nour; it is also equally heart-breaking in the lowest lows of the story and does leave one with more awareness of the life of people on the move. 

Ultimately, the game is not one meant to be entertaining in the literal sense of the term. It provides a story, a human story, one that is anchored in reality, and pushes the player to learn about the hardships faced by people on the move. News cycles and mass information have been noted to desensitise individuals of distant (and not so distant) occurrences and Bury Me My Love works to try to fight that antipathy by providing a deeply empathetic experience about the Syrian Refugee Crisis and inspiring the player to do something with the feelings they feel and receive after having played the game.

Conclusion

In closing the interview, all three interviewees were asked whether or not they felt video games could contribute to helping address common memory of certain conflict-centric events, such as the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Maurin puts it best that the game and its themes of adversity, displacement, struggle, and distance, are still very much relevant today. There are still important migrant flows of people fleeing conflict and disaster, and as such, the game Bury Me My Love remains, unfortunately, relevant and contemporary. This sentiment is echoed by Dr Mol and Louis-Puttick, who both see potential in video games, though with addendums on the intent and the goals set out by the developers in making such charged games. 

This set of COMTOG interviews was designed to bring together different stakeholders and actors who have only to gain by interacting with each other. This project also placed front and center the importance of discussing and grasping the notion of ‘authenticity’ and how games can provide empathetic perspectives on still ongoing challenges for countless people. Maurin addresses it by humorously commenting on the ‘God-complex’ of developers and that their total control over the world in which the game is placed is misleading. If there was an attempt by developers to portray a very pointed perspective (in terms of values, convictions, etc.), it would feel very forced and could be spotted immediately by players. What developers like Maurin try to do is portray a collection of stories which are sourced from documentation; they do not provide a moral or a lesson but the tools for the players to internalise the experiences they have vicariously lived through and hopefully do something about it. 

ECPS’ Never Again initiative and COMTOG project

Our collective history offers stories of war, resistance, intolerance, and perseverance. ECPS’ Never Again initiative prompts us to look back at these memories of conflict and democratic backsliding so that we, citizens, can be better informed of their causes and realities. A wealth of research has highlighted how mainstream media, i.e., TV, film, radio & news, have shaped the collective memory of these conflict narratives. However, as media technology evolves rapidly, the research studying collective memory must evolve with it.

The Collective Memory Through Online Games (COMTOG) project has emerged under this Never Again initiative to showcase the educational and social potential of serious, transformative gaming (video games, LARPs, tabletop roleplaying games) relaying the realities of conflict through a nuanced, well-researched, and empathetic lens. COMTOG is set to publish a series of interviews exploring the research process, artistic direction, and dissemination of these conflict-centred games. The game creator’s insights are included in interviews alongside the experience of diverse experts in the field (i.e. historians, policymakers, activists), thus creating a resource improving historical serious games’ ability to aid active remembering.

Moreover, serious gaming can provide the population with an immersive experience that can be used for educational purposes such as raising awareness, boosting ethical values, and preserving collective memory. Existing research has found their integration into educational programmes promising and positively impactful. We aim to understand how serious games discussing and portraying the victims of the conflict were researched and developed to stimulate interest in creating similar kinds of games.

 

(*) Martin Galland is a Master’s graduate in both European Policy and History, from the University of Amsterdam and KU Leuven, after having done a Bachelor in International Studies at Leiden University. His most recent thesis analysed the presence of (banal) nationalistic discourses present in a historical theme park in France, and how a specific vision of a French identity emerges from the theme park’s various shows. His research interests lie in the banal nationalism of contemporary populist movements, and the strengthening of right-wing populist discourse in interpretations of the past and history.

 

References

— (2015). “Le voyage d’une migrante syrienne à travers son fil WhatsApp.” Le Monde. December 18, 2015. https://www.lemonde.fr/international/visuel/2015/12/18/dans-le-telephone-d-une-migrante-syrienne_4834834_3210.html (accessed on March 2, 2023).

Boom, K. H. J.; Ariese, C. E.; van den Hout, B.; Mol, A. A. A. and Politopoulos, A. (2020). “Teaching through Play: Using Video Games as a Platform to Teach about the Past.” In: Hageneuer, S. (ed.) Communicating the Past in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12–13 October 2018). Pp. 27–44. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bch.c. License: CC-BY 4.0.

Politopoulos, A.; Mol, A. A. A.; Boom, K. H. J. & Ariese, C. E. (2019). “History is our playground”: action and authenticity in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Advances In Archaeological Practice, 7(3), 317-323. doi:10.1017/aap.2019.30.  

DavidKirschner

COMTOG Interview with Dr David Kirschner on ‘My Memory of Us’

by Digital-populismEditor’s ChoiceInterviewsMultimediaVideos

Interviewed by Iván Escobar Fernández

Dr David Kirschner is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Human Services and Cultural Studies at Georgia Gwinnett College. My Memory of Us is a narrative-driven puzzle-adventure video game developed by Juggler Games. The game is set in a fictional version of Poland during World War II and tells the story of a young boy and girl who must navigate through a city divided into two parts: one for Jews and one for non-Jews. The game features hand-drawn art, puzzle-solving, stealth elements, and a unique memory-manipulation mechanic that allows players to change the past to solve puzzles and progress through the story. The game received positive reviews for its story and art. Overall, My Memory of Us is a touching and emotional game about friendship, love, and survival during a war.

FlorentMaurin

COMTOG Interview with Florent Maurin on ‘Bury Me My Love’

by Digital-populismEditor’s ChoiceInterviewsMigrationMultimediaVideos

Interviewed by Martin Galland 

Developed by The Pixel Hunt in 2015, Bury Me My Love is a branching text-based narrative based around the story of people on the move during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. Its main characters are Nour and Majd, a young couple from Homs, Syria. The player takes on the role of Majd, having stayed behind in Syria to take care of his mother and grandfather, while his partner, Nour, goes on to attempt the journey to Germany in order to receive refugee status there. Much of the game is based on three core mechanics which impact the outcomes of choices made throughout Nour’s journey: Time; the itinerary; and finally, Nour’s own variables of morale, budget, her relationship with Majd, and what she has or does not have on her person in key moments. With this expansive and branching narrative, there are 50 different locations to go through and nineteen possible endings for Nour’s journey, with widely divergent outcomes.

See the Report

African american gamer girl surprised after winning online competition on gaming pc. Photo: Shutterstock.

ECPS COMTOG Project – Interview with Moyra Turkington on gaming and women fighting on the front lines of history

by Digital-populismEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeInterviewsVideos

Historical game studies is a young, slowly expanding interdisciplinary field which must address the challenges of designing games about the Holocaust and conflict, as well as being a woman in the gaming industry. Only 30 percent of game designers are female which results in on-screen female characters which are underrepresented, have fewer lines, have stereotypical gender roles and are over-sexualised, while nearly half of the people who are playing video games are women and these women play games as well as men do.

By Anita Tusor*

In line with this year’s Women’s History Month theme, “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories,” our first The Collective Memory Through Online Games (COMTOG) interview not only focused on youth radicalisation and its platforms, contemporary antisemitism, online hate and gaming, and historical memory of the Holocaust; but closely examined educational, roleplaying games with stories about women in WWII designed by an international team of women and non-binary writers led by Moyra Turkington.** 

The 21st century has seen an impressive and considerable evolution in the capability and popularity of gaming. With the expansion of its market, quality, and audience, COMTOG aims to uncover analog- and video games’ potential to raise historical consciousness. Nonetheless, the depiction of historical events in certain games has recognizable flaws. A common thread of criticism lies in the representation of war – most notoriously, World War Two – and how most games glorify conflict while neglecting the victims’ perspective, especially first-person shooter games (Glouftsis, 2022). Alternatively, some games avoid the mention or existence of tragedies from historical conflict. In this way, these games appear to contribute to misshaping and misconstruing the collective memory of the period.

However, it must be noted that a growing number of games published in the last decade have broached the topic of war and conflict in a far more nuanced and considerate fashion. These projects tend to stem from smaller game-publishing houses, where the artistic and creative choices undertaken by the game developers are often well-researched, portraying the historical past and conflict in such a way that does not obscure the horrible realities of war while remaining instructive but considerate to the victims’ experience. Turkington and her team’s project, War Birds, provides an anthology of games about women in World War II and a fine example of how to approach Holocaust game designing issues. 

Turkington’s latest publication (2021) addresses game-designing techniques to bypass serious issues in Holocaust-related historical role-playing games, such as the potential trivialisation of the Holocaust or players learning to blame the victims. Game design challenges are exemplified through the description of Rosenstrasse, a role-playing game in which players adopt the roles of Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in mixed marriages in Berlin between 1933 and 1943. In our conversation, Turkington mentioned Rosenstrasse as an explicitly transformational game specifically designed to be a deep emotional experience. Testplays and qualitative research study with eighteen subjects proved it to be a highly effective experience (AJS Perspectives, 2019).

Historical Game Studies and Women

Historical game studies is a young, slowly expanding interdisciplinary field which must address the challenges of designing games about the Holocaust and conflict, as well as being a woman in the gaming industry. Only 30 percent of game designers are female (Guardian, 2020), which results in on-screen female characters which are underrepresented, have fewer lines, have stereotypical gender roles and are over-sexualised, while nearly half of the people who are playing video games are women (Yee, 2017) and these women play games as well as men do (Shen et al., 2016). 

Furthermore, there is an existing and serious concern about the toxicity of not only how and by whom games are developed but the player cultures as well, not to mention the marginalisation of whole groups of people (namely women, LGBTQA+, people of colour) (Wright, 2022: 177; Heron et al., 2014). Women often feel uncomfortable, maybe harassed or excluded from communal gaming spaces (Fishman, 2022). Gaming girls and women are more likely to hide their gender using voice-changing headsets than their male counterparts (Hetfeld, 2021). Abusive players face few consequences; female players are more prone to withdraw from playing certain games (Fox & Tang, 2016).

The gaming industry’s refusal and slow progress in addressing misogyny and extremism (Compton, 2019) have resulted in a dire report by the leading anti-hate organisation; ADL (2022). The latest survey shows gender was the most frequently cited reason for identity-based abuse. “In broader national movements, it is typically antisemitism that lies at the root of white supremacy movements; in games, it is misogyny” (ADL, 2022: 9). The concept of “geek masculinity and networked misogyny” (EGRN, 2021) shows similarities with populism as it is “being entrenched in heteronormative and patriarchal ideas of gender and sexuality, and is threatened by the presence of those deemed to be ‘others’” (Peckford, 2020: 67). Pöhlmann (2021) coins the term ‘ludic populism’ while investigating video games that undermine their own populist aesthetic and argues that video games can both reinforce and challenge the idea of a unified group of “the people” by using populist imagination, often through implicit or explicit essentialist means.

Live-action role-playing games (LARPs) may also utilise populist imagination, as well as perpetuate and foster misogyny and antifeminist hate speech narratives. Karner (2019) and others (Moriarity, 2019, PuzzleNation, 2018) stress that inclusiveness and acceptance of female players are gradually moving in the right direction. However, it is only possible if change begins at the game development level. Games made by women include creative, political minds who “can help break the tide of prejudicial game design and writing” as well as may enable “roleplaying to become the next stage of feminist storytelling” (Cross, 2012: 84).

 

(*) Anita Tusor is a recent graduate of the Double Master’s Program of King’s College London and Renmin University of China in Asian and European Affairs. She also holds a M.A. in Applied Linguistics and a B.A. in Hungarian and Chinese Studies. Previously, she has worked with different think tanks and is currently working as a Research Assistant at the ECPS and the International Institute of Prague. Anita’s research interests include the processes of democratisation and de-democratisation, populist constitutionalism, political parties and their systems, and foreign malign influence operations.

(*) Moyra Turkington is an award-winning Canadian larpwright, game designer and theorist with a background in Cultural Studies and Theatre. She is also the founder of the indie studio Unruly Designs and the leader of the War Birds Collective — an international community designing political games about women fighting on the front lines of history. Turkington is interested in immersive, transformative and political games, particularly in creating a multiplicity of media, design, representation and play.

 

ECPS’ Never Again initiative and COMTOG project

Our collective history offers stories of war, resistance, intolerance, and perseverance. ECPS’ Never Again initiative prompts us to look back at these memories of conflict and democratic backsliding so that we, citizens, can be better informed of their causes and realities. A wealth of research has highlighted how mainstream media, i.e., TV, film, radio & news, have shaped the collective memory of these conflict narratives. However, as media technology evolves rapidly, the research studying collective memory must evolve with it.

The Collective Memory Through Online Games (COMTOG) project has emerged under this Never Again initiative to showcase the educational and social potential of serious, transformative gaming (video games, LARPs, tabletop roleplaying games) relaying the realities of conflict through a nuanced, well-researched, and empathetic lens. COMTOG is set to publish a series of interviews exploring the research process, artistic direction, and dissemination of these conflict-centred games. The game creator’s insights are included in interviews alongside the experience of diverse experts in the field (i.e. historians, policymakers, activists), thus creating a resource improving historical serious games’ ability to aid active remembering.

Moreover, serious gaming can provide the population with an immersive experience that can be used for educational purposes such as raising awareness, boosting ethical values, and preserving collective memory. Existing research has found their integration into educational programmes promising and positively impactful. We aim to understand how serious games discussing and portraying the victims of the conflict were researched and developed to stimulate interest in creating similar kinds of games.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill and Russian President Vladimir Putin as they attended a ceremony celebrating the 1025 anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Rus in Kiev, Ukraine on July, 27, 2013. Photo: Shutterstock.

Culture War in the War in Ukraine

by CommentariesECSP ECRNHomeMONITOR

Putin’s narrative of the Ukrainian government as Nazis and “junkies” is a rhetoric of legitimation of invasion and a performance of culture war. By invading Ukraine, Putin is not only taking back the land he believed to be part of Russia but also rescuing it from being the ‘puppet of the [morally corrupt] West.’ He is defending Russia’s state-civilization against globalism and liberal democracy based on plurality, human rights, and multiculturalism.

By João Ferrerira Dias 

The post-Berlin wall world was lived in the belief of the victory of liberal democracy and thus the “end of history” (Fukuyama, 1992), a promise never fulfilled. The deindustrialization of Europe, alongside the emergence of multipolar economic globalism with the reallocation of production in Asia, gave room for a growing skepticism in different European countries (v.g., Taggart & Szczerbiak, 2002) during the 90s and further resentment with the emergence of populist parties (v.g. Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2016), returning to the nativist ideology, with the defense of native identities vis-à-vis capitalist globalization (v.g. Lindholm & Zúquete, 2010). The increased migratory waves of Muslims from the north of Africa and the Middle East and a welfare crisis that came after the 2008 global economic and financial crisis empathize the appeal of anti-globalist and identitarians movements (Zúquete, 2018), which pièce de resistance is the great replacement theory. However, a significant part of the identitarians does not use the “ethnic, biological and racist discourse of white supremacists, but that of the defense of European culture against Islam pointed out as a vehicle of values irreconcilable with those of modern Western civilization, civic, secular and liberal” (Marchi & Bruno, 2016: 42).

The moral panic of an unconcealable Europe and Islam was, for instance, well explored by the German party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) during the 2017 election after the 2015 refugee crisis. It is now widely admitted that misinformation and fake news played an important role in spreading moral panic and the appeal for nationalism. The anti-immigration propaganda was elaborated within fake news on refugees’ wave of sexual crimes in countries like Germany and Sweden. This helped people turn themselves to the parties who claimed that would stop the open-borders policies that gave free passage to “rapists.”

Russian Propaganda and Culture War

It is very liable and spotted that the growth of radical right movements in Europe is linked to Russia’s strategy of supposedly financial support and pro-Russian media propaganda (Juhász & Szicherle, 2017). The strategy is clear and effective: i) promoting moral panic; ii) driving the people to perceive right-wing radical parties as the solution against globalism and open borders; iii) weakening the European Union by growing nationalist parties; iv) strengthening the influence of Russia in Europe by presenting it as the example of moral strength and unity around the idea of ‘one nation.’ Thus, Russian civilization’s strength lies in its Christian moral and cultural unity and uniqueness.

Russian propaganda on the strength of its moral unity is related to the context of culture wars. The concept refers to a conflict about nonnegotiable conceptions embodied in cultural and moral spheres (Hunter, 1991, 1996; Wuthnow, 1996), such as moral sexuality, gay rights, gender parity, and abortion. Although literature emphasizes culture wars in the United States (US), it happens in different places around the globe, including Russia. According to Robinson (2014), Putin’s third presidential election in 2012 was marked by culture wars in the country. In that year, the members of Pussy Riot were arrested and sentenced for protesting against Putin. One year later, Putin promulgated a law forbidding gay ‘propaganda’ to minors, considering it an unacceptable moral disruption imported from Europe.

Putin’s rhetoric on Russian civilization’s uniqueness is presented in the idea that Russia is a ‘state-civilization’ carried by the Russian Christian orthodoxy and the joint of other religions in Russian territory around a common concern for preserving traditional moral values. For the Russian leader, globalization brought a different kind of international tension:“Many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic traditions and differences between people and cultures. Society is now required not only to recognize everyone’s right to the freedom of consciousness, political views and privacy, but also to accept without question the equality of good and evil (…)” (Robinson, 2014: 28-29).

For Putin, the erosion of traditional values – which started with the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union – is particularly evident in today’s Europe, and Pussy Riots protest sounded the alarm for him. It helps explain the urgency of invading Ukrainian territory and the long-term support of the far-right in Europe (Polyakova, 2014, 2016; Shekhovtsov, 2017). Then, Putin took new programs on the culture wars, such as the reform of school manuals, the establishment of a Military-Historical Society with the involvement of the Minister for Culture, the cultural celebration of Russian feats of arms, including new war memorials, and more prominence given to Russia’s part in World War I. Moreover, he recovered Stalin’s physical and ideological fitness program (Gotov k trudy i oborone) in 2014. He started an intense persecution of the “traitors” of the “fifth column” – the liberal intelligentsia committed to Western ideas, ethno-nationalists, and Russia’s LGBT community. 

Thereby, Putin’s narrative of the Ukrainian government as Nazis and “junkies” is a rhetoric of legitimation of invasion and a performance of culture war. By invading Ukraine, Putin is not only taking back the land he believed to be part of Russia but also rescuing it from being the ‘puppet of the [morally corrupt] West.’

Not surprisingly, Putin forced the comparison of Russia’s international isolation to ‘cancel culture,’ giving J. K. Rowling – author of Harry Potter – denunciations for her views on gender as an example. By taking ‘cancel culture’ to international relations, Putin signals the cultural dimension of the war in Ukraine. He is defending Russia’s state-civilization against globalism and liberal democracy based on plurality, human rights, and multiculturalism.

References

Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Free Press.

Hunter, J. D. (1992). Culture wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America. Avalon Publishing.

Hunter, J. D. (1996). Reflections on the culture wars hypothesis. The American culture wars: Current contests and future prospects. University Press of Virginia, 243-56.

Juhász, A. & Szicherle, P. (2017). The political effects of migration-related fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories in Europe. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Political Capital, Budapest.

Lindholm, C. & Zúquete, J. P. (2010). The struggle for the world: Liberation movements for the 21st century. Stanford University Press.

Marchi, R. & Bruno, G. (2016). A extrema-direita europeia perante a crise dos refugiados. Relações Internacionais (50), 39-56.

Mudde, C. & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2016). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Polyakova, A. (2016). “Putinism and the European far right.” Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C. November 19, 2015. https://imrussia.org/images/stories/Russia_and_the_World/Putin-Far-Right/alina-polyakova_putinism-european-far-right.pdf (accessed on March 14, 2023).

Polyakova, A. (2014). “Strange bedfellows: Putin and Europe’s far right.” World Affairs. (177, 3): 36-40.

Taggart, P. & Szczerbiak, A. (2002). The party politics of Euroscepticism in EU member and candidate states. Brighton: Sussex European Institute.

Robinson, N. (2014). The political origins of Russia’s culture wars. University of Limerick.

Shekhovtsov, A. (2017). Russia and the Western far right: Tango Noir. Routledge. 

Wuthnow, R. (1996). Christianity and civil society: The contemporary debate (Vol. 1996). A&C Black.

Zúquete, J. P. (2018). The identitarians: The movement against globalism and Islam in Europe. University of Notre Dame Press.

Refugees, asylum seekers protest immigrants' deportation at Rautatientori Railway Square in Helsinki, Finland on March 11, 2017. Photo: Shutterstock.

Migration diet of populism versus migrant attraction in Finland

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceHomeMigrationMONITOR

Populist movements and parties have been successful in gaining support by tapping into people’s emotions, fears, and grievances, and by promoting simplistic and often divisive solutions to complex problems. As long as these underlying factors exist and are not effectively addressed, populist movements are likely to continue to emerge and gain support.

By Ilkhom Khalimzoda

Contemporary populism has become a prevalent and polarizing topic in modern-day politics. Populist movements and parties have gained significant momentum in recent years, and their impact on the political landscape is undeniable. Populism has risen to prominence in several countries, such as the United States, Italy, Hungary, and Finland, as a response to globalization, inequality, and economic crises (Mudde, 2019). The topic of populism represents a significant shift in political dynamics, characterized by a rejection of political elites, a focus on emotions and identity, and a disregard for democratic norms (Weyland, 2018). 

In Finland, the populist movement gained momentum with the formation of the Finns Party, formerly known as the True Finns Party, in 1995. The party is primarily known for its anti-immigration stance, Euroscepticism, and opposition to globalization (Kuisma, 2019). The party’s early success was limited, but it experienced a significant surge in popularity during the European migrant crisis in 2015 (Salmela & Jungar, 2019). The Finns Party received 17.7 percent of the votes in the parliamentary election in 2015, making it the second-largest party in the parliament (Kuisma, 2019). 

Anti-migration discourse is a central theme of populist movements and parties in Finland. Populists use anti-migrant rhetoric to appeal to voters’ fears of losing their jobs, cultural identity, and safety (Kuisma, 2019). Some parties have been particularly vocal about its opposition to immigration, advocating for strict immigration policies and the expulsion of migrants with a criminal record (Kuisma, 2019). Party’s anti-immigrant stance has also been criticized for being xenophobic and racist (Jungar & Peltonen, 2018). 

Populist movements and parties benefit from the fear of the “other” by capitalizing on people’s anxieties and grievances. Populists use identity politics to create a sense of belonging among their followers, and they often blame migrants and minorities for the economic and social problems facing the country (Mudde, 2019). This strategy allows them to deflect attention from the underlying causes of these problems and instead offer simple solutions that appeal to voters’ emotions.

Polls have suggested that there is a significant level of anti-immigrant sentiment among the Finnish public, while others have shown a more positive attitude towards immigrants. For example, a survey conducted by the Finnish polling firm Taloustutkimus in 2019 found that a majority of Finns believed that immigration had a negative impact on Finland. The survey found that 55 percent of respondents believed that immigration had a negative impact on the economy, while 65 percent believed that it had a negative impact on social cohesion. Additionally, the survey found that 62 percent of respondents believed that the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Finland should be reduced. However, other surveys have suggested that Finns are generally more positive towards immigrants than these results might suggest. For example, a survey conducted by the Finnish National Agency for Education in 2020 found that 72 percent of respondents believed that it was important to promote multiculturalism in Finland, and that 70 percent believed that the country should be more open to accepting refugees and asylum seekers. Anti-migrant parts of the population are more likely to vote for populist parties. According to a survey conducted by the Finnish National Election Study, voters who expressed negative attitudes towards immigrants were more likely to vote for the Finns Party (Jungar & Peltonen, 2018). The study also found that the Finns Party had the highest share of anti-immigrant voters among all political parties in Finland. 

The anti-migration discourse in Finland has created a negative perception of the migrant population, leading to discrimination and exclusion in society (Salmela & Jungar, 2019). In the recent study, it was found that immigrants believe they are perceived more as a threat than a benefit to Finnish society (Nshom et al., 2022). The discourse has also contributed to the stigmatization of migrant communities, which has resulted in a lack of integration and social cohesion (Jungar & Peltonen, 2018). This dynamic perpetuates a cycle of fear and resentment, leading to further polarization and division. 

What Does Populism May Do to the Talent Attraction Attempts of Finland?

Finland has introduced a new immigration act, which is intended to make the immigration process more efficient and straightforward for migrants. It has launched a global marketing campaign to attract talent to the country, called “This is Finland” (Business Finland, n.d.). The campaign showcases the country’s quality of life, innovation, and business opportunities (Business Finland, n.d.). Additionally, various programs aimed at integrating willing residents with foreign backgrounds into mainstream society have been taking place. One potential explanation for Finland’s continued efforts to attract skilled workers is that the government is attempting to balance the economic benefits of migration with the political challenges posed by populist movements. Some researchers argue that policies promoting economic growth through migration can help mitigate populist backlash by addressing the underlying grievances of voters, such as job insecurity and economic inequality (Givens & Luedtke, 2020). These attempts have been affected by the populist rhetoric, as the anti-immigrant discourse has created a negative image of the country in the eyes of the potential migrants, argues Jylhä & Leinonen (2021). 

Discussion

Populist movements and parties have been successful in gaining support by tapping into people’s emotions, fears, and grievances, and by promoting simplistic and often divisive solutions to complex problems. As long as these underlying factors exist and are not effectively addressed, populist movements are likely to continue to emerge and gain support.

The dilemma of growing populism and skilled worker attraction is not unique to Finland alone, as many other countries also face similar challenges. What is different is the specific context and characteristics of the Finnish society and economy. Finland, with a relatively small population, traditionally relied on exports and innovation for economic growth. In recent years, Finland has been facing demographic challenges such as an aging population and declining birth rates, which have created a need for more skilled workers to maintain economic growth and ensure the sustainability of the welfare state. 

Furthermore, many populist groups in Finland have been particularly vocal in their opposition to immigration, especially from non-Western countries. This has often taken the form of opposition to refugee resettlement and asylum-seekers, rather than opposition to skilled workers. However, populist groups in Finland (and elsewhere) often frame their opposition to immigration in terms of protecting domestic jobs and economic opportunities, which could potentially extend to opposition to skilled workers as well. But overall, it is more common for populist discourse in Finland to focus on refugees and asylum-seekers as a perceived threat to national identity and security. This has created a tension between the need for skilled workers and the political pressure to restrict immigration. Therefore, the specific context and characteristics of the Finnish society and economy make this dilemma somewhat unique, and it requires careful consideration and balancing of economic and political priorities.

It is important to note that the impact and influence of populism can be mitigated by promoting inclusive and participatory democratic institutions, strengthening social cohesion, and addressing the root causes of economic and social inequalities. While populism in a way is a legitimate form of political expression, reflecting the concerns and the grievances of a segment of a population (Mudde, 2019), anti-migration populism discourses are concerning. Especially so when it is polarizing, black-and-white, and often based on distorted facts and figures. This takes further the climate of us-and-them, prejudice, and division (Weyland, 2018). The negative perception of migrant communities perpetuated by the discourse can lead to discrimination and exclusion, which undermines social cohesion and appeal of new talents into the country. 

References

— (n.d.). “This is Finland.” Business Finland. https://toolbox.finland.fi/ (accessed on February 25, 2023).

— (2019). ”Maahanmuuttajien vaikutukset suomalaiseen yhteiskuntaan.” Taloustutkimus Oy. 

Givens, T. E. & Luedtke, A. R. (2020). “The Economic Benefits of Immigration: How the Biden Administration Can Use a Strategic Approach to Promote Growth, Innovation, and Inclusion.” Progressive Policy Institute. https://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Immigration-and-Growth.pdf

Jungar, A. C. & Peltonen, J. (2018). “The Rise of Populism and the Crisis of Democracy in Europe.” Journal of Democracy. 29(2), 16-30. doi:10.1353/jod.2018.0020 

Jylhä, K. & Leinonen, E. (2021). “Attracting talents and retaining them: A case study on the Finnish immigrant experience.” Geoforum. 118, 93-102. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.12.009

Kuisma, M. (2019). “Populism in Finnish Politics.” In: R. Heinisch, C. Holtz-Bacha, & O. Mazzoleni (Eds.), “Handbook of Political Populism.” (pp. 1-19). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Mudde, C. (2019). “The Study of Populism as a Way of (not) Studying Democracy.” In: C. R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism. (pp. 96-114). Oxford University Press.

Nshom, E.; Khalimzoda, I.; Sadaf, S. & Shaymardanov, M. (2022). “Perceived threat or perceived benefit? Immigrants’ perception of how Finns tend to perceive them.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 86, 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2021.11.001.

Nshom, E. (2022). “Perceived threat and support for right-wing ideology in Finland.” Acta Sociologica. 65(1), 43-54.https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12294

Salmela, M. & Jungar, A. C. (2019). “The institutionalisation of populism in Finland: An analysis of populist actors and their discourse.” Acta Politica. 54(1), 22-44. doi:10.1057/s41269-018-0104-9

Member of the EU Parliament in the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists Eva Kaili gives a keynote speech during an event about Financial regulation in EU in Brussels, Belgium on June 25, 2018. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.

Corruption scandals: A rather narrow window of opportunity for populists? 

by CommentariesECSP ECRNEditor’s ChoiceHomeMONITOR

In populist rhetoric, corruption is an obvious indication of institutional decay generated by the ‘corrupt elites’ and affecting the interests of the pure people.’ More specifically, the causal path could be described as follows: Corruption exacerbates political polarization by promoting the idea that the economic elites control the agenda-setting process and shape government politics in favor of their own interests, leading to representational inequality. Yet, is always an anti-corruption crusade the shortest way for populists to come to power?

By Marina Zoe Saoulidou*

The ‘war against corruption’ has, diachronically, been the flagship of populist parties and an inherent part of both their rhetoric and election promises. The examples of politicians who instrumentalized the high perceived levels of corruption in their electoral campaign in order to rally support for their political agendas are abundant; Donald Trump in the United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Victor Orbán in Hungary, to name but a few (Porcile & Eisen, 2020; Haughton et al., 2020). The same goes for Greece, where the left-wing SYRIZA, both in 2012 and in 2015, fiercely denounced ‘the corrupt political elites and crooked bankers’ (Smith, 2012) and pledged to fight against “a political system that supports corruption and collusion” (Tsipras, 2015).

In populist rhetoric, corruption is an obvious indication of institutional decay generated by the ‘corrupt elites’ and affecting the interests of the pure people.’ More specifically, the causal path could be described as follows: Corruption exacerbates political polarization by promoting the idea that the economic elites control the agenda-setting process and shape government politics in favor of their own interests, leading to representational inequality (Gilens, 2012; Elkjær & Baggesen Klitgaard, 2021; Bartels, 2017; Drutman, 2015). This, in turn, opens a window of opportunity for populists, which present themselves as the only defenders of people’s interests and promise to restore good governance and the ties of trust with the political institutions. Additionally, the fight against corruption serves as a means for populists to be differentiated as newcomers from the established parties and to stylize themselves as outsiders that fight for voters’ interests (Kossow, 2019; Engler, 2020). In any case, the strength of their anti-corrupt message is positively affected by the levels of corruption in the country (Hawkins et al., 2018) and the levels of social inequality (Uslaner, 2008; Loveless and Whitefield, 2011), as their combination bridges institutional and economic grievances. 

Yet, is always an anti-corruption crusade the shortest way for populists to come to power? The answer is not so clear-cut, even in countries that traditionally score highly on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), such as Greece. The country consistently lags behind as far as transparency in the public sector is concerned (Figure 1). It is telling that in 2012 Greece’s score was 36/100; in 2013 was 40/100, while in 2016 —and under the government of SYRIZA— the score remained low (44/100). The data for 2021 is quite similar, as the country’s score is 49/100. Nevertheless, at the moment, neither a populist party that has declared war on corruption rules the country nor this specific issue seems to be more salient than the economy, even since the outbreak of the Qatar corruption scandal, in which the name of Eva Kaili, a Greek MEP, is involved, as well as the ‘Patsis case’, which is related to the expulsion of a New Democracy MP, Andreas Patsis, as a result of having professional activities that were not consistent with the status of the MP.

Figure 1: Corruption in Greece (2012-2021)

Source: Transparency International. Note: 0=highly corrupt; 100=very clean

The Salience of Corruption in Greece

In particular, though the public debate in Greece over the last weeks is monopolized by the recently disclosed ‘Qatargate’ scandal —as it is widely referred to in the media— and the ‘Patsis case’, none of them figures at the top of citizens’ list of concerns. Put differently, at a time when the political confrontation is mainly based on which party can more efficiently combat corruption; this issue does not seem to be of great concern to the voters. 

This is evidenced by the data of a newly published report compiled by the public opinion research company Marc(fieldwork: 16-21 December 2022) which, among other things, showed that the three biggest concerns of the respondents are the “high prices/ price increases” (81.3 percent), the “national issues/Greek-Turkish relations” (41 percent) and the “criminality/violence” (37.2 percent). Contrarily, the ‘Kaili case’ and the ‘Patsis case’ are of high concern for only 9.5 percent and 5 percent of the interviewees, respectively.

It is also interesting the fact that the most popular answer among the voters of all political parties (voting intention) to the question: “Who do you think is most affected by Eva Kaili’s case?” was Greece (35.2 percent) and not the political system in general or even Kaili’s party of origin, namely the PASOK (19.2 percent). Furthermore, in the midst of political confrontation centered on corruption, 38.2 percent of the survey participants believe that it is the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (leader of the center-right party ‘New Democracy’) who can better handle issues of corruption and transparency and not Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing populist SYRIZA (36 percent).

The findings in a series of Eurobarometers are also similar. In the Standard Eurobarometer 77, for instance, which was carried out while the so-called ‘Lagarde List’ scandal was in the headlines, 66 percent of the respondents answered that the most important issue that Greece was then facing was its economic situation, 57 percent of them responded that the major problem of the country was the unemployment and 20 percent believed that Greece’s biggest problem was the government debt. 

Similarly, 40 percent of the respondents indicated as their main concern —on a personal level— during that period the economic situation in Greece, 30 percent indicated the levels of unemployment, 29 percent the financial situation in their household and 26 percent indicated the rising prices/inflation in the country. 

Figure 2: Greek voters’ concerns during the Lagarde List scandal (July 2012)

Source: Standard Eurobarometer 77 (Spring 2012).

These observations, of course, do not imply that corruption is an irrelevant factor regarding the increase of demand side of populism. Rather, they indicate that we should be very cautious when we —arbitrarily— hypothesize that the politicization of corruption is both a necessary and sufficient condition for affecting the electoral fortunes of populist parties. If voters do not list corruption in their high concerns, to what extent is its political exploitation by populist parties possible? 

On the other hand, if they indeed recognize corruption as a threat to their interests but lay the blame on both mainstream and challenger parties or even reject as a whole the party system, to what extent could the anti-corruption and anti-elite rhetoric of populist parties be translated into electoral gains? The outright rejection of the party system normally translates into ‘exit’ and not electoral dealignment. Therefore, a more refined approach of the theory, which would take under consideration other parameters, such as the institutional system, the levels of clientelism or even the freedom and the independence of the Press, is needed.

(*) Marina Zoe Saoulidou is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). Her thesis focuses on the dynamics of both left- and right-wing populist parties in Europe in the context of economic crises.

References

— (2022). Marc public opinion research company. Athens, https://www.protothema.gr/files/2022-12-25/ΠΡΩΤΟ_ΘΕΜΑ_ΔΕΚΕΜΒΡΙΟΣ_2022.pdf (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Tsipras, A. (2015). Alexis Tsipras’ speech at the nationwide Syriza Conference. ΣΥΡΙΖΑ_ Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς. https://www.syriza.gr/article/id/62211/Alexis-Tsipras-speech-at-the-nationwide-SYRIZA-conference-.html (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Bartels, L. (2017). “Economic Inequality and Political Representation.” In: Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (pp. 233-268). Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400883363-010

Drutman, Lee. (2015). “The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate.” Studies in Postwar American Political Development (New York; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Apr. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190215514.001.0001

Elkjær, M. A., & Klitgaard, M. B. (2021). “Economic inequality and political responsiveness: A systematic review.” Perspectives on Politics. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592721002188

Engler, S. (2020). “’Fighting corruption’ or ‘fighting the corrupt elite’? politicizing corruption within and beyond the populist divide.” Democratization. 27(4), 643–661. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2020.1713106  

Eurobarometer (2012). European Commission: Standard Eurobarometer 77. Public Opinion in the European Union. Survey requested by the European Commission, requested and co-ordinated by Directorate-General for Communication (DG COMM Unit ´Strategic Communication´).  https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/1063 (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Gilens, M. (2012). Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7s1jn

Smith, Helena. (2012). “Greek elections: Alexis Tsipras – Kingmaker or deal breaker?” The Guardian. June 11, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/11/greek-elections-alexis-tsipras-syriza (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Haughton, T.; Rybář, M. & Deegan-Krause, K. (2021). “Corruption, campaigning, and novelty: The 2020 parliamentary elections and the evolving patterns of party politics in Slovakia.” East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures. 36(3), 728–752. https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254211012765

Hawkins, K. A.; Carlin, R. E.; Littvay, L. & Kaltwasser, C. R. (Eds.). (2018). The ideational approach to populism: Concept, theory, and analysis. Routledge

Kossow, Niklas. (2019). “Transparency International Knowledge Hub.” Transparency International.https://knowledgehub.transparency.org/ (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Loveless, M. & Whitefield, S. (2011). “Being unequal and seeing inequality: Explaining the political significance of social inequality in new market democracies.” European Journal of Political Research. 50(2), 239–266. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2010.01929.x  

Porcile, L. & Eisen, N. (2022). The populist paradox. Brookings. March 9, 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/10/28/the-populist-paradox/ (accessed on December 31, 2022).

Uslaner, E. (2008). Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law: The Bulging Pocket Makes the Easy Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511510410   

Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro poses with anti-riot police agents after cast their ballot in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil on November 29, 2020. Photo: Antonio Scorza.

A hot January in Brasilia

by CommentariesECSP ECRNEditor’s ChoiceHomeMONITOR

The “two Brazil” theory is now stressed, as never before. From now on, culture wars will have a civil confrontation dimension. It remains to be seen in what terms and on what scale. From the divided families to the broken country, the march goes on. The thesis of an actual split of the country, a break-up of the Federal Union, is on the table. In a more mitigated scenario, the security forces can prevent the escalation and leave democracy safe, but in a state of permanent alert whose political effects in the Senate are still challenging to predict. 

By João Ferreira Dias*

From the very beginning of Bolsonaro’s presidential path, still in the campaign that led him to the presidency of Brazil in 2018, the former Brazilian president sought to copy Trump’s strategy (Baptista, Hauber & Orlandini, 2022), taking prejudice to the center of the campaign (Martins, 2002). The so-called culture wars (Hunter, 1992) have definitively entered the political arena, perfectly demarcated between (a) the regions that are majority white and expressing animosity toward the North-East, the evangelical sector of society which is transversal in terms of class but dominated by the elites, advocating a conservative turn in terms of customs for the country and the confluence between state and church, and (b) the non-evangelical lower social classes, the progressive left, and the LGBTQ+ and anti-racist militant and activist sectors. In Brazil, it includes the sense of loss of the historical privileges of the Brazilian upper and middle classes, who inherited a form of the social organization of colonial matrix –which Quijano (1997) named coloniality – and did everything to preserve it through the ideology of the state.

The battle for the heart of Brazil took place. The Right radicalized and regimented itself around Bolsonaro, which made use of the corruption that surrounded the PT (Lula’s party) governments to implement the so-called agenda of customs (conservative moral values) and the neoliberal agenda in the economy, with an inclination for privatization and exploitation of natural resources, such as the deforestation of the Amazon. The Ox-Bull-Bible axis (Stefanoni, 2018) created the conditions for Bolsonarism to become vigorous. 

The basis of this strength lies in the middle class, which has always attended the best universities (and which, in some cases, has been overtaken by more able young people from the lower classes due to the social policies of the PT governments), which works in the leading newspapers of the big cities like São Paulo, which saw its capacity to exploit poor labor diminished by the PT’s labor legislation that imposed guarantees on workers. Jessé Souza asks categorically, in The Elite of Backwardness (2017), “how someone who exploits the other classes below her in the form of a vile wage to save time on domestic chores, and supports the indiscriminate killing of poor people by the police, or even the slaughter of defenseless prisoners, can have the nerve to believe oneself morally elevated?”

Now, the intersection between a sense of injustice in the face of the loss of class privilege, the natural displeasure with structural corruption (truly structural, insofar as it is found in the very formation of Brazil as a state), the importation of the most alienated Trumpist conspiracy and populist theories, and the deep messianic belief in a providential leader and an elected people (themselves; Ferreira Dias, 2020), produces a mass of voters with a mission, which because they consider providential owes no respect to the Constitution and democratic rules.

Having rehearsed an ambiguous Trumpist posture of defeat without defeat, Bolsonaro has fed the hosts, letting marinate the belief of electoral fraud, which his party has continued and amplified. 

We can affirm that we are facing a movement of a fascist nature (following the plastic definition of Stanley (2020)) of the caudillo type, which refuses electoral results, does not accept democracy, and wants a single identity for the country (ideology of the nation), centralized in a vital state apparatus, of “law and order,” strongly classist and racial, and deeply conservative-religious (evangelical).

The probable military repression to restore the normal functioning of institutions is no guarantee of the regime’s survival. Lula is seen as an anti-Christ that needs to be defeated, no matter what. The advance of the police could be interpreted as the advance of the Romans on the Christians, and the Bolsonarists could take themselves on as martyrs to their patriotic cause. 

Lula’s speech of reaction to the invasion of Congress, the Planalto and the Supreme Court will do little to heal the situation by reinforcing the fight between Left and Right, by accusing Bolsonaro of being “genocidal,” by forcing social division, and by placing a negative weight on Bolsonarist supporters by calling them “fanatical fascists.” The coolness of state that one might demand has given way to continued social rupture and ideological struggle.  

The “two Brazil” theory is now stressed, as never before. From now on, culture wars will have a civil confrontation dimension. It remains to be seen in what terms and on what scale. From the divided families to the broken country, the march goes on. The thesis of an actual split of the country, a break-up of the Federal Union, is on the table. In a more mitigated scenario, the security forces can prevent the escalation and leave democracy safe, but in a state of permanent alert whose political effects in the Senate are still challenging to predict. 

The precedent of The United States Capitol opened the space for these tumults. What can and should be feared is replication in the West, in the forthcoming elections in several European countries, where populism, many of authoritarian inspiration, claims to be the voice of the people. We must remember the words of Georges Duhamel: “The greatest tyrants of the people have almost all emerged from the people.” For now, Brazil is the ticking time bomb, the most apparent laboratory of the culture wars and ideological alienation. This time it will be the Trumpist sector of the United States that will look to Brazil as a laboratory of potentialities. How the situation unfolds in Brazil will affect the future paths of the more polarized Western democracies.

(*) João Ferreira Dias is a researcher at the Centre for International Studies – ISCTE, Lisbon, in the Research Group Institutions, Governance, and International Relations. He is researching culture wars, politics of identity, and fundamental rights. PhD in African Studies (2016). PhD candidate in International Studies (2021- …). Columnist. http://joaoferreiradias.net

References

Baptista, Érica Anita; Hauber, Gabriela; Orlandini, Maiara. (2022). “Despolitização e populismo: as estratégias discursivas de Trump e Bolsonaro.” Media & Jornalismo. 22.40: 105-119.

Ferreira Dias, João. (2020). “O Messias já chegou e livrará ‘as pessoas de bem’ dos corruptos: messianismo político e legitimação popular, os casos Bolsonaro e André Ventura.” Polis. 2.2: 49-60.

Hunter, James Davison. (1992). Culture wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America. Avalon Publishing.

Martins, Erikssonara Thalessa da Câmara. (2022). O avanço do neoconservadorismo e a extrema-direita no Brasil: uma análise a partir da Campanha Eleitoral de 2018 ao Governo Bolsonaro. Bachelor’s Thesis. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.

Quijano, Aníbal. (1997). “Coloniality of power in Latin America.” Anuario Mariateguiano. 9.9: 113-121. 

Stefanoni, Pablo. (2018). “Biblia, buey y bala… recargados: Jair Bolsonaro, la ola conservadora en Brasil y América Latina.” Nueva Sociedad. 278: 4-11.

Souza, Jessé. (2017). A elite do atraso: da escravidão à Lava Jato. Leya.

Stanley, Jason. (2020). How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Members of the Reich Citizens' Movement organize a lift at the Lustgarten in the city of Berlin, Germany on November 9, 2019. They deny the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany. Photo: Juergen Nowak.

What does Patriotic Union’s coup plan in Germany tell us about threats posed by far-right?

by AnalysisArticlesEditor’s ChoiceExtremism & RadicalisationHomeMONITOR

As the investigations are ongoing, not much is known of the real threat to democracy that this group posed. Nevertheless, the German authorities did take it very seriously, which could be an indication of the seriousness of the situation. Assessing the group and its coup plan, Jan Philipp Thomeczek underlines the fact that some members of the group had a security background, such as military or police experience, moreover many of them owned weapons and ammunition.

By Kim van Os*                                                                                                                          

On the 7th of December 2022, German authorities arrested 25 people for plotting to overthrow the German government. The group, called the Patriotic Union, was divided into a ‘Rat’ (Council) and a military branch, ready to take over the various ministerial posts. Their plan was to storm the Reichstag parliament building and seize power, using violence if necessary. The group planned to instate Heinrich XIII, a descendant of German royalty, as the Emperor of Germany. In addition to the arrest of 25 people, the police also seized weapons acquired by the group and Iridium satellite telephones. The latter are special telephones which work even when the electricity network collapses, something the group was also planning to do (Connolly, 2022).

Little is known about the ideology of this Patriotic Union. According to Jan Philipp Thomeczek, an expert on populism and the far-right in Germany, the Patriotic Union is a very heterogeneous group, and it is therefore quite hard to pin it down to a specific ideology. Its members are quite diverse, ranging from former and current soldiers, current and former members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing populist political party in Germany, to the people with an extremist background. In addition, the group does not have a manifesto or program. What however is known, states Thomeczek, is that the Reichsbürger movement had a strong influence within this group. Many of the members of the Patriotic Union came from the Reichsbürger movement, including the previously mentioned Heinrich XIII. 

The Reichsbürger (which translates to ‘Citizens of the Reich’), deny the existence of Germany’s post World War II Federal Republic, and do not accept the legality of Germany’s government. According to them, Germany is still controlled by the United States, the United Kingdom and France. In one of their most influential publications, ‘21 Punkte zur tatsächlichen Situation in Deutschland – Analyse & Aufklärung’ (Translation: ‘21 points on the real situation in Germany – analysis & enlightenment’), they state the following: ‘Germany has not been a sovereign state since the end of the Second World War, but rather militarily occupied territory by the Allied forces, above all, as the main victorious power, that of the United States of America’ (21 Punkte…, 2022)

Although all Reichsbürger members share the same belief in that they do not accept the legality of Germany’s government, they do not all have the same ideology. According to the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, of the 23.000 Reichsbürger in Germany, 5 percent can be classified as far-right extremists. Among them are those with special military training, police agents and members of the military.  Although they might not all be classified as far-right, the origins of the group can be traced back to far-right ideology. For instance, the Reichsbürger passport is based on the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935. Under this law, only people of German or related blood were approved for Reich citizenship (Schlegel, 2019). Although this law specifically mentioned Jews as people not eligible for Reich citizenship, the law also excluded Black people and Roma and Sinti for Reich Citizenship (Facing History, 2022).

The use of violence by Reichsbürger is not unknown, in 2016 a member of the group killed a police officer and injured three others (Oltermann, 2016).  In 2020, members of the group took part in an attempt to storm the Reichstag during a protest against Covid measurements (The Guardian, 2020). In 2021, the BvF attributed around 1011 extremist crimes to them (Connolly, 2022). In recent years the Reichsbürger movement has grown, in 2016 the BfV estimated the group at 10.000, in 2022 the group was estimated at 23.000 members (DW, 2018; Goldenberg, 2022). 

According to Thomeczek, in addition to being influenced by the Reichsbürger movement, the Patriotic Union was also influenced by the QAnon conspiracy theory. The QAnon conspiracy theory dates back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Stanton, 2020). This fabricated antisemitic text was published in 1903 and discusses a Jewish plan of world domination. Although this conspiracy theory has been used throughout the centuries, most famously by Hitler, it resurfaced in the far-right sphere in the US in October 2017 on the internet platform 4chan under the name ‘QAnon’ (Wendling, 2021). QAnon adherents believe the world is controlled by satanic cannibalistic pedophiles and that the former US president Donald Trump was fighting against these people. Violence is not unknown to QAnon believers, many of the people who stormed the Capitol in the US were QAnon adherents (Wendling, 2021). At the same time, Thomeczek explains that the connection to QAnon should be regarded as a secondary feature of the Patriotic Union, as it is a very heterogeneous group. 

Thomeczek mentions that both the QAnon conspiracy theory as well as the Reichsbürger movement gained more attention during the Covid-19 pandemic because of their anti-lockdown standpoint. This is not surprising, explains Thomeczek, because if you believe in conspiracy theory about the German state or QAnon, something like a global pandemic really plays into the cards of conspiracy theories. Thomeczek argues that a connecting element between the QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-covid protests is the so-called ‘protection of the children.’ According to Thomeczek, the rule that made it mandatory for children to wear masks ‘sparked a lot of protests among parents, because they thought it was dangerous for the children.’

Germany’s right-wing populist party AfD also had a strong anti-lockdown standpoint during the pandemic. Moreover, some of the members of the group planning the coup had connections to the AfD. According to Thomeczek, one of the most important AfD related figure in this group is Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who served as a member of the AfD in the lower house of parliament between 2017 and 2021. Since June 2022 she has been a member of the AfD’s Court of Arbitration. At the same time, however, no official links between the group planning the coup and AfD have been found. On the website, the AfD, published the following sentence with regards to the planned coup: “Like most citizens, we only found out about the case today from the media. We condemn and strongly oppose such efforts. Now we have to wait for the investigation. We have complete trust in the authorities involved and demand a quick and complete clarification.”

The fact that they issued such a short statement is very interesting, according to Thomeczek, they did not even mention the Reichsbürger movement for instance. They are doing the bare minimum to distance themselves from the movement, because if they are somehow connected to the movement it could lead to a prohibition of the party, Thomeczek mentions. However, Thomeczek continues, the short statement shows that the extremism from this group is not a real issue for them, while they do strongly focus on Islamic extremism in their agenda. Thomeczek concludes by saying that, besides the former AfD members being included in the plot, there are no real connections between the AfD and the group organizing the coup. 

The AfD, which currently holds 78 seats in the Bundestag, has similar ideology as other right-wing populist parties in Europe such as Euroscepticism and anti-immigration standpoint. They differ in the sense that the AfD came into parliament relatively late in comparison with other right wing populist parties in Europe. Although some right-wing populist parties, such as the DVU and the Republicans, had some regional successes in the 1990s, as soon as they were linked to the national socialist past in some way, the potential to reach national successes died according to Thomeczek. This was the case until the AfD entered the scene. 

Thomeczek mentions that the AfD established themselves as a more moderate party but became more radical over the years. In 2013 they almost made it into parliament, back then the party was not extremely right-wing nor extremely populist. In the 2015 and 2016 state elections, the AfD managed to win seats in multiple states. According to Thomeczek, after 2015, the party became much more populist and radical, the party was ‘already somehow established and then radicalized and then it became even more successful, especially in East Germany.’ The presence of the AfD in East Germany seemed to have sucked up the potential for right-wing extremism. Which is interesting according to Thomeczek, because in East Germany there were some ‘right-wing extremist parties such as the National Democratic Party (NPD) in the 1990s and 2000s, and now that the AfD is there. A much more radical AfD, compared to some west German states, completely sucked up this potential for right wing extremism.’ Thomeczek argues that perhaps in the coming years, analysis will show whether AfD is still a populist party or if it has become extremist too and has become closer to parties such as the NPD. 

The real threat to democracy that the group organizing the coup posed is hard to tell. As the investigations are ongoing, not much is known of the real threat to democracy that this group posed. Nevertheless, the authorities did take it very seriously, which could be an indication of the seriousness of the situation. Thomeczek says that some members of the group had a security background, such as military or police experience, moreover many of them owned weapons and ammunition. In addition, the group was actively trying to recruit people from the military. Moreover, according to Thomeczek, ‘a quite important detail is that many of those people have the legal right to own a weapon, normally you don’t have that but if you are security force or hunter for example, you have that legal right,’ which indicates that they did not only owned weapons, but they also knew how to use them. Therefore, Thomeczek adds, ‘the potential for violence was definitely very high and if so, much violence is possible, is on the table, then it is definitely a big threat.’ At the same time, according to Thomeczek, it is difficult to tell how advanced the planned coup was, as the group was still working on their plan when it was uncovered. 

Although there may not be any clear link between the group planning the coup and the right-wing populist party, populist leaders can influence these types of groups because they often engage with conspiracy theories leading to the undermining of the legitimacy of democracy. Which is what happened in the US when Trump called the election results fraudulent, eventually leading to people storming the capitol and a more recent example of the storming of political buildings in Brasília in Brazil (Sullivan, 2023).

Moreover, the threat of far-right terrorism has been growing in recent years across the globe. According to US Homeland Security ‘white supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States.’ In that sense, the plotted coup in Germany should be seen as a warning to pay close attention to extremist right-wing movements and the role that right-wing populists might play in this. 

(*) Kim van Os is an intern at European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) with a master’s degree in International Relations. Her main research interests are the relation between populism and far-right radicalization, gender, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.  

References

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— (2020). “Anti-corona’ extremists try to storm German parliament.” The Guardian. August 29, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/29/berlin-braces-for-anti-coronavirus-protest-against-covid-19-restrictions (accessed on January 11, 2023).

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