national populism and slovak – hungarian relations in - MEK

Approaching National Populismpopular interests as failing or even treacherous. Nationalism, then, was identifiedas a threat to certain ‘supranational’ tools envisaged as furtherance ofthe socio-economic development of European nations. In doing so, the mainstreamintuited the two most serious challenges to their legitimacy.To sum up, except for being ‘the right’ – that means despising the ideathat all people be equal as the result of the state intervention – the radicalright also espoused nationalism and populism in their criticism of establishedactors, norm and ideas within European polities. Interpreting thepolitical in terms of then national and juxtaposing the people and elite, theradical right posed a serious threat to the ‘regular’ way of doing politics inthe societies at issue.Going back to the helpful concepts, in his important contribution Mudde(2007) draws a line between the radical and extreme parties (of the right)and defines the core ideology of the populist radical right.According to his argument, the populist radical right (PRR), being nominallydemocratic yet challenging some key elements of liberal democracy,such as constitutional protection of minorities, should be for the purposesof analysis segregated from the extreme (right) parties. The latter are knownto attack the sancta sanctissima of democracy itself, its popular sovereigntyheart. Not only PRR ought to be confused with the extreme right; it alsobelongs to the different class than the Right which is radical, but not populist.Finally, he provides arguments for treating differently also other populistparties which are not radical right.Regarding ideology, Mudde first defines PRR as a form of nationalism.Its essence is an expression of a nationalist persuasion called nativism. Thenhe identifies the ideological core of the PRR as a combination of nativism,authoritarianism, and populism.Nativism stands for “an ideology, which holds that states should beinhabited exclusively by members of the native group (‘the nation’) and thatnon-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening tothe homogenous nation state. The basis for defining (non-) ‘nativeness’ canbe diverse, e.g. ethnic, racial or religious, but will always have a culturalcomponent” (Mudde 2007, 19, original emphasis).Concept of nativism analytically covers nationalism, xenophobia, (andalso racism, as nativism can, but need not, include the racist attitudes), antiimmigrantstances as well as the welfare chauvinism from the above list oftraditional characteristics of the radical right. Hence, it is true essence of thePRR which therefore can be narrowly defined as the politics of nationalism. 2Another core ideological feature of PRR is authoritarianism understoodas “the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of author-National Populism and Slovak – Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006 – 2009. Forum Minority Research Institute Šamorín – Somorja, 200915