Radical right populist entrepreneurs and the use of religious representations through popular culture
George Becali as the ‘Saviour of Romania’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12598801 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Alina Asavei (0000-0002-4252-8044, Charles University, Czech Republic, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 43-60 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1367549420973205 |
| OpenAlex | W3110995477 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 17 |
While there are a few significant studies on the varieties of populism in post-socialist Romania, little scholarly work on populists’ ethos of religious inspiration exists. This article addresses this lacuna from a cultural studies perspective, exploring popular culture’s productions of religious inspiration employed by the radical right populist entrepreneur George Becali, and it argues that the diversity of religiously encumbered cultural productions provide a significant insight into fleshing out the mechanisms of his messianic neo-populism. By employing a critical visual analysis and hermeneutics, this article aims to illuminate how a populist entrepreneur attracts potential supporters by using the rhetoric of nativism and ‘neo-traditional, autochthonous culture and religion’, purporting to reveal a mutual cultural ground between the messianic leader and ‘the people’. His political strategies are oftentimes packaged in cultural formats and discourses emphasising local religious symbolism that turns him into a ‘Saviour of the Nation’. Yet, at the same time, the article demonstrates that popular culture can also constitute a foundation for resisting the populist’s kit of religiously loaded visual rhetoric
Aesthetics · Ethos · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Popular culture · Populism · Psychological nativism · Rhetoric · Social science · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Corruption, Informality and Entrepreneurship in Romania
Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound
Communicating mixed messages about religion through internet memes
A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art
The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture
The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies
Memes as games
Romania is a family and it needs a strict father
From Historical to “Dialectical” Populism
The Media and Neo-Populism
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |