Populism is not inherently nationalistic. Cas Mudde, a political scientist from the University of Georgia, found that populism is in fact a thin-centered ideology that pits two homogenous groups against one another made up of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite,’ who antagonize one another. These two groups share the same interests and values, yet the elite are often considered to be immoral and corrupt. Finally, populist leaders claim to be the sole will of the people, who take on the corrupt elite that represent special interests.
Because populism is thin-centered, it can take various forms and rest on different ends of the political spectrum. Thus, populism becomes highly pragmatic, and this pragmatism often leads to contradictions. A fascinating conundrum I have come across over the course of my studies into nationalist populist movements is that they are often riddled with contradictions. Of these contradictions, one of the most interesting is modern nationalist populism’s reliance upon internationalism to gain legitimacy and recognition.
This first became apparent to me following a review of the work done by David Motadel, a historian at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who dedicated much of his work to 20th century nationalism. He indicated that while these nationalist populist movements despise the very word ‘internationalism,’ internationalism is not fully incompatible with nationalism and that these movements often advocate for global cooperation. They do so by engaging in international cooperation, forming organizations, and providing outside material and support. Motadel also highlighted that while they do engage in such activities, nationalist alliances are often fragile and conflicting. When I came across this, I wondered “how could this be?” It seems so illogical and contradictory, and yet there are countless examples from the past and present that appear to support this determination.
For the remainder of this blog, I plan to dig deeper into the internationalism of modern nationalist populist movements of the 21st century in Europe and further uncover and exploit this contradiction. I will be doing so based upon the frameworks established by Mudde and Motadel. Hopefully the journey of this blog will shed more light on how nationalist populist movements rely on each other in an international context and demonstrate a contradiction at their very core.
The Grand Fallacy 