January 2021 Newsnet
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January 2021 • v. 61, n. 1 NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Rightward Populist Rebellion in East Central Europe: Anxieties, Proselytization, and the Rebirth of Mythical Thinking Jan Kubik, Rutgers University/University College London Editor’s note: This article is based on the President’s Address at the What is populism? Following several authors, but 2020 ASEEES Convention. It is not a transcript, rather Prof. Kubik’s particularly Cas Mudde, I define it as a type of ideology reflections on a work in progress. or discourse. It has two forms: thin and thick. The former has four features, the latter – five. It is important to assume When in early 2019 I proposed the theme of the annual that all four features of thin populism need to be present to convention, “Anxiety and Rebellion,” I had no idea that the classify a given ideological statement, political program, or topic would become so much more relevant in 2020. The discourse as populist. These features include: theme reflected my anxiety shared with many observers of the rise of right-wing populism in the world, particularly the 1. Vertical polarization that sets “the people” against increasingly bizarre and frightening spectacle of Trumpism “the elites,” which are seen as separate and mutually in the US and the ascendance to power of right-wing populist exclusive groups or categories of people. 1 parties in Poland and Hungary, both members of the EU. I 2. Antagonism exists between the two categories. expected neither the intensification of protest politics nor the explosion of irrationality, the process I call mythologization. 3. The whole construct is strongly Manichean (i.e., it is based on fundamentalist moralizing), which assumes It is accepted in the literature that the rising popularity that the essential feature of social/human reality is of populism and growing support for its political the struggle of the forces of good and evil and that manifestations, most importantly populist political parties, any conflict/tension between these two groups is is a reaction to various anxieties. I treat populism as a an instance of that fundamental struggle. The key form of rebellion against political, cultural, or economic implication of Manicheism is that political opponents conditions that generate anxiety, while an intensifying wave of populists, construed as champions of the forces of reactions to the populist upheaval is seen as counter- of evil, are – by definition – illegitimate or at least rebellions. If populism is a reaction to rising anxiety among defective political actors, whose elimination from the some people, its emergence becomes a source of anxiety for public sphere needs to be rhetorically promoted and, others, and a cycle of reaction and counterreaction, also in if possible, enacted. the streets, commences. 4. Finally, there is the idea that politics should be the Inside this Issue • January 2021 • v. 61, n.1 Rightward Populist Rebellion in East Central Europe: Anxieties, 2020 Executive Director’s Report 19 Proselytization, and the Rebirth of Mythical Thinking by Lynda Park by Jan Kubik, Rutgers University/University College London 1 2021 ASEEES Board of Directors & Committees 24 The 2020 Professor Purges in Retrospect: ASEEES Concerns & Advocacy Plans Affiliate Organizations’ 2020 Prize Winners 26 by Rebecca Mitchell, Middlebury College & Steven Seegel, Personages 27 University of Northern Colorado 7 Publications 28 Finland Forgotten: A Historical Case of (Unconscious) Cognitive Bias? Institutional Member News 30 by Malcolm L. G. Spencer 10 In Memoriam 35 Gaming Russian and Soviet History 15 Affiliate Group News 37 by Barbara C. Allen, LaSalle University January 2021 • NewsNet 1 expression of volonté général (general will). This idea helps select category, for example members of “our” race, nation, to define and justify attempts to introduce in practice or religion. Right-wing populists invariably employ the popular sovereignty, according to which the substance of latter – exclusionary – type of strategy. (majoritarian) democracy trumps procedures (of liberal What do they do exactly? How does it work? By resorting democracy). Moreover, the latter are seen as a nuisance to cultural remedial measures designed to reduce the if not an obstacle to the exercise of the people’s genuine anxiety, but only among those who can be classified as will. This, in turn, opens a way towards the justification “us,” exclusivist politicians, such as right-wing populists, of authoritarianism as a form of rule. generate a range of consequential results. They improve their If democracy, in a nutshell, is understood as the supporters’ self-perception by elevating “us,” putting “them” rule of people constrained by the rule of law, fully- down, displacing guilt from “us” to “them,” and ascribing fledged democracy is always liberal democracy.2 Ergo, blame to “them.” They promise redemption. Finally, they authoritarianism can be defined primarily as a strategy of explain ruling as an automatic and easy process, as long as power exercise that removes or minimizes the rule of law the “people” trust the leader who is simultaneously “one of and the system of institutional checks and balances. them” and a “chosen one,” and knows how to do “just the right thing.” A relationship between leaders and followers 5. Populists need to define ‘the people’ and when they founded on such convictions inevitably leads to the offer such a definition populism thickens. The most intensification of authoritarianism in the political system. common cultural resource employed in providing such a definition is a conception of national identity, There are several conceptual tools that can help us to describe usually derived from the concept of nativism. It serves and analyze the way cultural mechanisms employed by to generate horizontal polarisation whose essence is right-wing populists can and sometimes do alleviate their the juxtaposition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, the central followers’ anxieties. One of them is what Arlie Hochschild distinction of exclusionary right-wing populism. calls emotion work; the other is mythologization, my sole focus here. The literature on the relationship and contrast There are several ways to explain the rise of populism, between mythological and non-mythological, for example but they all can be reduced to either two or four types of scientific, thinking is gigantic, but worth re-reading as it explanations. Inglehart and Norris analyze the dilemma offers many tools that can help in dissecting mythologization culture or economy, while Eatwell and Goodwin write that is so ubiquitous in today’s populist politics. I have about four Ds: (1) deprivation (economic insecurity); (2) already dusted off three old interpretive tools. First is the dealignment (of the political system that no longer properly idea that myth is a disease of language.4 The second comes represents peoples’ interests); (3) distrust (particularly from Claude Levi-Strauss who was convinced that myths of the elites); and (4) destruction (of traditional cultures have “hidden” structures, which can be reconstructed via providing existential security).3 a systematic comparison of several versions of a mythical The same analytical scheme applies to sorting out various story. For example, once we uncover that initially concealed types of remedies or anxiety-reducing mechanisms that structure, we can see how the “deep story” so structured can people may rely on to cope with the dramatically changing help to deal with grand existential questions popping up in world. In a nutshell, anxieties can be reduced by: (1) making the minds of people tortured by anxiety.5 Third, it is useful politics more responsive to people’s needs; (2) improving to be reminded that myths pull people away from rational people’s economic condition by redistributing wealth more thinking (logos) towards evidence-resistant and emotion- equitably; (3) reorganizing society to help people become ridden intellectual constructions (mythos) and this process more trustful of each other and the elite; and (4) redesigning enhances people’s belief in the efficacy of magic.6 Fourth, culture in a way that would help people understand and it is always important to remember that even in the most operate in the increasingly alien world. “modern” societies myths circulate in many areas of life, particularly in politics, and are often associated with Whether and how some cultural remedies may alleviate ritualistic performances. but also exacerbate anxieties is a hugely important question that I do not have space to address. Instead, I want to focus Not for a moment do I want to suggest that it is easy to on another distinction. In the broadly conceived cultural cleanly separate mythical and non-mythical modes of sphere, those who attempt to provide remedies have – by thinking, rationality from irrationality, or that it makes and large – two strategies to choose from: inclusionary sense to periodize social development by delineating various or exclusionary. They can try to offer remedies applicable epochs on the basis of the centrality of mythical thinking in either to a broad and varied range of people or to a narrow, them, as was done by early evolutionary thinkers.7 Mythical January 2021 • NewsNet 2 and non-mythical modes of thought coexist, in various is the transformation of “gender” from a descriptive and combinations, in all known societies. The locus classicus explanatory category of social sciences into a rhetorical