During the past few years a radical populist right has emerged in a number of West European democracies. Mixing xenophobia with a neoliberal economic program, radical right-wing parties have been increasingly successful at the polls. Their success can be explained partly in terms of a protest against immigration from third world countries and the established political parties and partly as the result of the profound social and cultural transformation of advanced western democracies.

The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe

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Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe.

This article focuses on the pivotal role the notion of Lebensraum played within the Nazi spatial mindscape. Tracing the complex and contradictory genealogies of Lebensraum, we note how geographers’ engagement with Geopolitik has only made modest reference to the role Lebensraum played in shaping the biopolitical and genocidal machinery implemented by Hitlerism and its followers. Moreover, most of this literature highlights a clear discontinuity between the Lebensraum concept formulated by German academic geographers and the Nazis respectively. Rather than emphasizing the divide between German Geopolitik and Nazi biopolitics, we claim that the Third Reich incorporated Lebensraum by merging its duplicitous meaning, as living/vital space and as life-world. Equality important were both Nazi ‘functionalist’ understandings of Lebensraum as well as its ontological merging of Lebens and Raum in which the racialised German nation is conceived as a spatial organism whose expansion is the essential expressio...

Life in space, space in life: Nazi topographies, geographical imaginations, and Lebensraum

The presence of 'non-Western actors' in the Western Balkans has recently attracted the attention of policy-makers and academics alike, with the rise in prominence of non-EU countries coinciding with the weakening power of accession conditionality. While this trend was initially discussed in the context of a 'new Cold War' narrative, evidence-based research soon showed that this engagement is underpinned by particularistic interests at the top and 'corrosive capital'. The governance dimension is therefore essential in understanding the ties existing between the Balkan countries and the non-Western actors. Making use of primary and secondary data, this article compares the modus operandi of two non-EU actors in the region: Russia and the United Arab Emirates. It is argued that non-transparent business deals can stimulate a normative shift in the Western Balkans' political leadership away from pursuing the rule of law, and towards an authoritarian turn, while strengthening small circles of self-serving elites, at the expense of the citizenry at large. This is conceptualised as a 'vicious circle' of illiberalism and state capture, as viewed through the lens of corrosive capital.

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The vicious circle of corrosive capital, authoritarian tendencies and state capture in the Western Balkans

In their paper, \"Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe,\" Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petö analyze the common points and differences in which imagined and mythologized histories are serving as a mobilizing force for extreme-right movements in three Central European countries, in Austria, Hungary, and Italy. The authors discuss how populist and right-wing political parties in these countries construct their conceptions of an alternative identity for the European Union. Further, the authors analyze the politico-territorial myths constructed by the three populist right-wing parties, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy, and the Party of Hungarian Life and Truth. The programs of the three parties assert the equasion of the German concept of Volk with territory: the Freedom Party propagates a particular concept of Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), the Northern League of Padania assumes to be the true \"nation\" of the reagion, and the Party of Hungarian Life and Truth builds on imagined and mythologized concepts of an ancient Hungary with a homogeneous society and culture. The authors analyze the construction of essentialist identities based on imagined historical communities and on the exclusion of the Other where antiSemitism is a driving factor represent a sceptical ideology evident in the discourse of the said parties. Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petı, \"Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss4/2> Patricia CHIANTERA-STUTTE and Andrea PETİ Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe The extreme right in Europe is constructing actively a counter discourse based in national histories in order to oppose the European Union's attempts to redefine notions of territoriality (see, e.g., Keating). The aim of the present article is to introduce and to analyze the common points and differences concerning the ways in which imagined histories are serving as a mobilizing force for the extreme right in three countries and the ways in which some extreme right-wing parties in these countries defend an alternative identity to that endorsed by the European Union. In our discussion, we focus on the processes of constitutions of collective identities through the usage of invented -or imagined (see Anderson) -historical traditions by the extreme rightist movements in Italy, Austria, and Hungary. In our definition, these countries are geographically but more importantly socio-culturally located in Central Europe (for a recent definition of Central Europe, see Tötösy de Zepetnek). Our selection of these three countries rests on their fascist or nazi legacies. In the case of Hungary, the legacy of communist rule complicates the picture and raises the question about the relationship between mainstream conservatism and the extreme right. In all three countries discussed, populist and rightwing political parties are well organized and have developed in the past few years considerable electoral support. Populist parties have been increasingly successful on the political landscape in Central Europe as Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria (FPÖ), the Lega Nord (Northern League), and MIÉP: Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja (Party of Hungarian Life and Truth) in Hungary show. These parties have adopted not just a peculiar nationalistic attitude aiming at the preservation of national traditions of old; they also redefine the boundaries of current national territories. They appear to re-interpret national boundaries in order to appeal to an ethnic community and a territory which do not necessarily coincide with the borders of existing nation states. This new phenomenon is defined as a new form of \"peripheral nationalism,\" a form of nationalism that deconstructs the category of the nation state based on the congruence between territory, people, and culture and reassembles it at another -subnational -level (see Soysal; Brubacker). In this definition, nationalism is understood as a heuristic category, \"a system of institutionalized differences coupling a collectivity within a culture and a territory\" (Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro 23). In the cases we examine, we show how the politics of collective identity work (see, e.g., Schmidtke), how they reshape the definition and the selfrepresentation of a community by giving it new grounds for mobilizing and new boundaries. The claim of \"distinctiveness\" of the \"nations\" represented by the Lega Nord and the MIÉP and the defense of the \"nation\" of Austrians by the FPÖ involves a re-interpretation of the historical processes by essentializing the nation and its origins in a distant past and by constructing the state as a modern artefact imposed on the \"true\" nations. The construction of new collective identities using models of imagined historical communities cannot be seen independently from the sceptical perception of a European unity shared by the Freedom Party, the Northern league, and the MIÉP. The European Union as denounced by these parties is explained as an example of the typical illnesses of European democracies where the lack of people's direct participation in the political process and in the structures of bureaucracy is criticized. Moreover, the said parties are not only anti-European: they share a common ideal of Europe, defined as a certain cultural and geographic area, whose integrity and development is felt as a necessity of preserving oneself against the penetration of other cultures who are thus pictured as threatening and dangerous. The ideal image of a culturally homogenous community is projected on their model of Europe: their Europe is a \"community of destiny,\" a closed cultural unit which has to preserve its identity. This attitude towards Europe -and that reflects a strong sense of ambiguity -can be observed not only at the political level in the discourses of right-wing parties such as our examples but Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petı, \"Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe page 3 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss4/2> also at a more \"intellectual\" level, as evident for example in the imagery produced by Andreas Mölzer (the \"ideologue\" of the FPÖ), Alain de Benoist (the founder of the French nouvelle droite), or István Csurka, the Hungarian politician for whom the enlargement of the European Union means the support of precisely those political and social tendencies he and his party is labelling the least desirable. In our opinion it is advantageous to analyse these right-wing populist parties comparatively because they are located in the cultures of the former Habsburg empire and because of their way of constructing a collective identity and of mobilising the population by appealing to their presumed homogeneity as a Volk (people), thus essentializing its content. The category of Volk is used in the political discourse in order to produce the same result: a strong difference from and the exclusion of the Other (immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, Jews, women, gays and lesbians, etc.) in order to foster internal cohesion. The concept of Volk serves as an internally unifying and externally dividing category and therefore plays a pivotal role in the constitution of populist right-wing movements: their rejection of internal pluralism and difference -all ambiguities and conflicts lie outside a strong identity (see Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro; Chiantera-Stutte). The link between Volk and territory -evident in the speeches by most populist right-wing politicians -is seen as something ancestral and related to old traditions and histories. This link is exclusive, that is, the territories are seen as strictly \"belonging\" to the people living in them and the relation between the Volk and the territory is seen as substantial. The nation's territory, its culture, and its collective identity constitute a whole, in which every element is related and is determined by every other (see, e.g., Kürti). In this way, the forms of territorialisation represented by the populist right-wing thinking constitute an example of attempts to constitute and emphasize transregional and transborder entities and therefore can be seen in their relation of congruence/incongruence with national principles. On the other hand, their idea of transregional territories has to be seen as alternative to the European Union's model of transitional cooperation, which of course is not based primarily on an exclusive idea of citizenship and on the sharing of imagined historical myths. Overall, all populist right-wing parties share a similar political structure and patterns of discourse: 1) they distinguish two ideas of nations, a \"good\" one and a \"bad\" one, 2) they distinguish two ideas of Europe, and 3) they connect their historical and socio-cultural traditions to the notion of Central Europe. The \"nations\" of these parties represent true nations because they mirror the real traditions and identity of the people. Thus, they are the only truly democratic nations while the State is the untrue nation because it imposes an artificial language, it imposes foreigners in its bureaucracy, and it imposes the payment of taxes to finance people in other regions. In its first phase to 1990, the political agenda of the various leagues was based on the claim to form separate ethnic units, thus \"nations.\" Indeed, the Northern League is the product of the fusion of various regional leagues were born in the 1980s. They saw themselves as \"internal colonies\" of the Italian State and Europe represented to them a crucial importance for the definition and the protection of their claims and rights. Not only did they seek recognition as \"ethnic movements,\" they also saw themselves as \"European\" in opposition to the Mediterranean. Therefore, the defence of local lan

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Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe

The idea of Mitteleuropa began to gain momentum in the German geopolitical science of the beginning of the twentieth century. German geopolitics, which became famous through the works of Karl Haushofer, had set out a geographical and political notion of Mitteleuropa that supported a political project based on German expansion. As such, Mitteleuropa developed as both a political and scientific concept, a project and a `reality'. With an analysis of the core elements defining the term Mitteleuropa one can begin to appreciate the characteristics that differentiate it from other geographical concepts, as well as the features which some conservative authors have promoted following the geopolitical scientists. As a `geopolitical idea', Mitteleuropa can be shown to designate a way of understanding politics, nature and culture, or more specifically, their relationship.

Space, Großraum and Mitteleuropa in Some Debates of the Early Twentieth Century:

Das Europa der Antieuropäer: Ein Vergleich von Lega Nord und FPÖ

Ratzel's stone guest: The art of politics in the work of Friedrich Ratzel

The analysis in this article addresses the resurfacing of Mitteleuropain the populist discourse or, more precisely, the use of Mitteleuropa-ideas in the political strategies of the Austrian FPO (Austria's right-wing `Freedom Party'). The plans of the future European assessment spread by the European right-wing populism have an ambiguous character, which partly reproduces the ambiguity of the traditional definitions ofMitteleuropa in the debate at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article shows that the FPO's use of the concept ofMitteleuropa must be analysed with regard to the problem of the Austrian identity, because the ambiguous status of an ‘Austrian identity between Mitteleuropa and German re-union’ is the most important condition underpinning the emergence of the FPO. Secondly, the choice of a particular idea ofMitteleuropa - the Mitteleuropadefined by principles of exclusion, by a strong German culture and identity (Kulturnation), and strict reference to a Volksgemeinschaft with a territory and a culture that are juxtaposed to a cosmopolitan and liberal idea of Mitteleuropa- reveals the FPO's historical legacy and its opposition towards democracy and the representative institutions. Finally, the question is raised as to whether Haider should be considered not only an Austrian phenomenon, but an Austrian reaction to political and economic transformations, which evoke other protest movements in Europe. On the one hand, Haider is an Austrian phenomenon. On the other hand, he represents an Austrian reaction to political and economic transformations. In this sense, Haider's populism can be compared to France's Le Pen or Belgium's Vlaams Blokif we look at the form of popular legitimacy that they invoke, the request for a re-territorialisation of politics and for the defence of a national / European identity, and the opposition to constitutional patriotism and to all forms of ``thin'' European identities.

The ambiguous Heritage of Mitteleuropa: the Resurfacing of Mitteleuropa as a Counter-image to the EU in Austrian Populism

The contribution will attempt to reflect on the interplay in recent theories of populism and crowd psychology between the ideas of mob and crowd on the one hand, and those of mass and people on the...

Patricia Chiantera-Stutte

Papers

Space, Großraum and Mitteleuropa in Some Debates of the Early Twentieth Century:

Das Europa der Antieuropäer: Ein Vergleich von Lega Nord und FPÖ

Ratzel's stone guest: The art of politics in the work of Friedrich Ratzel

The ambiguous Heritage of Mitteleuropa: the Resurfacing of Mitteleuropa as a Counter-image to the EU in Austrian Populism

Mob, people, crowds, and masses: Mass psychology and populism