New Populisms and the European Right and far Right Parties. Challenge and Perspectives for the Left

Documents

New populisms are haunting Europe. These populisms are shaping the European political rights. Both in the West and in the East. These new waves of the old discriminations, from the social, cultural, political, racial etc. point of view, are sharpened by the new discriminations due to the changes in the contemporary world.

 

The context of the global crisis of capitalism and the environmental and climate crisis triggers the dynamics of the management of “fear” and of “emergency”. Popular strata and the lower strata of the middle classes of European society form the mass basis of these populisms and these Rights. The “construction of the enemy” forms the cultural background of legitimacy of the ruling classes.

In March 2012 transform! europe, Punto Rosso and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation jointly organized a workshop on the topic in Milan.

The aim of the meeting was to analyse the new phenomena and to discuss the conduct and the state of the European Left parties and social movements, grappling with the new context, and with the old problems of the redefinition of traditional political forms and of organizational forms.

Find here the publication with the proceedings of the workshop, edited by Punto Rosso and transform! europe.

For free download in .pdf, .epub or .mobi format (for e-book readers) please click on the → left.

Contents

Giorgio Riolo: Presentation

Walter Baier: Introduction. Peril from the Right

Ernesto Laclau: Why Populism?

Andrea Fumagalli: The Populism of Precarity

Gerd Wiegel: The extreme right and right-wing populism in Germany

Roberto Biorcio: Italy: The Northern League and Berlusconi’s Populism

Adam Fabry: Nach Rechts! Demystifying the Rise of Populist and the Far-Right in Post-Transition Hungary

Saverio Ferrari: The Panorama of the European Extreme Right: Populisms and Extreme Rights, East and West

Thilo Janssen: Right-wing political models for the future of Europe: What is the Political Right up to in the European Parliament?

Elisabeth Gauthier: Confronting the Extreme Right: A Challenge for the Left Lessons Learned From the 2012 Elections in France

Yannis Stavrakakis: Beyond the Extreme Right: the European Populist Challenge

Mimmo Porcaro: Why Ever Should the Working Class Vote for the Left?

Luciana Castellina, Nicola Nicolosi: Conclusions