Populism and heritage

Chapter 1 provides a number of approaches to be used in analysing contemporary populism in Europe: anti-globalization approach, the anti-elitist approach, and populism as a political style approach. After explaining the merits of each approach, the last one is analysed in detail to illuminate the impact of the political style of right-wing populist leaders on the mobilization of masses in Europe, and elsewhere. Depicting the commonalities of populist leaders in the contemporary world, this Chapter scrutinizes how populist leaders and their communication strategists can mobilize masses through gestures, stories, myths, heritage, past, lies, scandals, gaffes, fake news, and a Manichean understanding polarizing the world into various categories, such as ‘us vs them’, ‘believers vs Infidels’, ‘the people vs the élite’, ‘friends vs foes’, and ‘good vs evil’. It also highlights that populism is a local phenomenon, and needs to be understood in its local manifestations. Following the theoretical debates on populism, a correlation is established between the rise of a populist rhetoric in Europe and the paradigm of the end of ideology. The main argument is that neo-liberal forms of governmentality tend to culturalize, ethnicize, religionize, and civilizationalize what is actually social, economic and political, and this has created fertile grounds for the augmentation of a Manichean populist rhetoric by creating polarized societies, divided between in-groups and out-groups. To this end, ethnic competition theory and intergroup contact theory have been scrutinized to understand the main drivers of cleavages between in-groups and out-groups in European cities.

Political science · Politics · Populism · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law