European Populism: Ideological Spectrum and Scorecard

Populism has taken over several former communist countries, like Poland. 

There are rising Right-wing populist parties in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands and Poland and Left-wing populists in Spain and Greece.

There are Right-wing populist governments in Greece (Left Syriza) Austria, Hungary and Poland.

WSJ has published a very interesting article on Poland's Right-wing government defacement of anti-Communist union leader and first post-Communist Lech Walesa. 

Populist governments put a great emphasis in re-writing history (in Argentina the populist Kirchners created a "Historical Revisionism Institute" for that purpose) , renaming streets, moving away statues and donning their leaders' name to all things public. Territorial marking, we can call it, a step further of gerrymandering (and much simpler).

But the authors of the article, Drew Hinshaw and Marcus Walker, add a key graph describing the commonalities and nuances of Left and Right-wing European populism:

Each column shows one ingredient of the Populists' electoral playbook:

1. Hostility to Muslim immigration
2. For a looser EU (against multi-state unions)
3. For higher welfare spending
4. For a weaker US military presence in Europe

The horizontal axis goes from the Far Left (Syriza and Podemos) to the Far Rigth (Poland and Netherlands)

This confluence between former Communist (Podemos, Syriza) and Fascist (National Front, Poland) parties is not new. Benito Mussolini explained it back in 1921:

"Tomorrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realize that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for acentralized and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation." 

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 494, Mussolini's declaration near the end of 1921.

The most interesting twist on European populism is that of Poland. Instead of opposing the European Union, the populist Polish leaders want to turn it into "European First Europe", launching a war against "non-European" immigration.

Hinshaw and Walter explain this new turn of the populist movements:

"Populism has grown where living standards have fallen, such as in Greece and Italy, but also where they haven’t. In Poland, which hasn’t had a recession for a quarter-century, even the successes of convergence with Europe have fed a potent nationalism.

Poland’s turn is unnerving European elites more than Brexit, because few Poles want to leave the EU. Instead, Poland’s populist rulers want to fight a culture war over the character of the EU and what it means to be European.

Some political scientists -like Harvard's Dominique Moisi- have developed a more ellaborated model to explain the motives for the rise of populism in prosperous countries.

For Americans looking at the tug-of-war on DACA and immigration reform, this is an interesting look at the mutations of the reactionary movements in the developed world.