FROM ETHNOPOPULISM TO SECURITY RISKS

Abstract

Erin Jenne (2018), in her highly instructive article dedicated to ethnopopulism: Is Nationalism or Ethnopopulism on the Rise Today?, defines ethnopopulism as a “discourse that equates ‘the people’ with ‘the nation’ and holds that sovereignty should be an expression of the will of the ‘nation-people”1 . She refers to Mudde’s notion of the populist radical right2 , denoting the moment when he draws attention to the fact that in recent decades nationalist parties are experiencing their rise and most of these parties are taking on an ethnopopulist form.3 Populism4 , as such, it is worth mentioning, according to Mudde, is an antagonistic ideology, i.e. an ideology that considers that society is divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, "pure people" versus "corrupt elite" and politics should be an expression of the volante general of the people’ / or general will of the people (Mudde, 2004)5 . Later, in line with Stavrakakis and De Cleen, Jenne puts an eye on the notion that populism and nationalism both serve to inscribe the boundaries of the idealized sovereign community more restrictively - excluding elites and “national others”, and also that nationalism is an antagonistic in-out discourse that excludes non-nationals, while populism is an antagonistic up-down discourse that excludes elites or the political establishment (De Cleen 2017; De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017; De Cleen et al. 2020; Jenne 2022)6 . She elaborates: ….” What happens when nationalism is co-articulated with populism in a single political system?