Memory Politics And Populism In Southeastern Europe

Download or read book Memory Politics and Populism in Southeastern Europe written by Jody Jensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the politics of memory in Southeastern Europe in the context of rising populisms and their hegemonic grip on official memory and politics. It speaks to the increased political, media and academic attention paid to the rise of discontent, frustration and cultural resistance from below across the European continent and the world. In order to demonstrate the complexities of these processes, the volume transcends disciplinary boundaries to explore memory politics, examining the interconnections between memory and populism. It shows how memory politics has become one of the most important fields of symbolic struggle in the contemporary process of "meaning-making," providing space for actors, movements and other mnemonic entrepreneurs who challenge and point to incoherencies in the official narratives of memory and forgetting. Charting the contemporary rise of populist movements, the volume will be of particular interest to regional specialists in Southeastern Europe, Balkan and postcommunist studies, as well as researchers, activists, policy-makers and politicians at the national and EU levels and academics in the fields of political science, sociology, history, cultural heritage and management, conflict and peace studies.

Download or read book The Rise of Populist Nationalism written by Margit Feischmidt and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this book approach the emergence and endurance of the populist nationalism in post-socialist Eastern Europe, with special emphasis on Hungary. They attempt to understand the reasons behind public discourses that increasingly reframe politics in terms of nationhood and nationalism. Overall, the volume attempts to explain how the new nationalism is rooted in recent political, economic and social processes. The contributors focus on two motifs in public discourse: shift and legacy. Some focus on shifts in public law and shifts in political ethno-nationalism through the lens of constitutional law, while others explain the social and political roots of these shifts. Others discuss the effects of legacy in memory and culture and suggest that both shift and legacy combine to produce the new era of identity politics. Legal experts emphasize that the new Fundamental Law of Hungary is radically different from all previous Hungarian constitutions, and clearly reflects a redefinition of the Hungarian state itself. The authors further examine the role of developments in the fields of sociology and political science that contribute to the kind of politics in which identity is at the fore.

Download or read book Poland's Memory Wars written by Jo Harper and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics. The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist. The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition. The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.

Download or read book A Century of Populist Demagogues written by Ivan T. Berend and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned historian Ivan T. Berend discusses populist demagoguery through the presentation of eighteen politicians from twelve European countries spanning World War I to the present. Berend defines demagoguery, reflects on its connections with populism, and examines the common features and differences in the demagogues’ programs and language. Mussolini and Hitler, the “model demagogues,” are only briefly discussed, as is the election of Donald Trump in the United States and its impact on Europe. The eighteen detailed portraits include two communists, two fascists, and several right-wing and anti-EU politicians, extending across the full range of demagoguery. The author covers Béla Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, weaving through Codreanu and Gömbös from the 1930s, on to Stahremberg and Haider in Austria, and then more broadly throughout Europe from Ceaușescu, Milošević, Tuđjman, Izetbegović, Berlusconi, Wilders, to the two Le Pens, Farage, and Boris Johnson, Orbán and the two Kaczyńskis. Each case includes an analysis of the time and place and is illustrated with quotations from the demagogues’ speeches. This book is a warning about the continuing threat of populist demagogues both for their subjects and for history itself. Berend insists on the crucial importance for Europe to understand the reality behind their promises and persuasive language as imperative to impeding their success.

Download or read book The Rescue Turn and the Politics of Holocaust Memory written by Natalia Aleksiun and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many of the essays focus on recent developments, they shed light on the evolution of this phenomenon since 1945.

Download or read book Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries written by Sanja S. Petkovska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries: Redefining Progressiveness, Coloniality and Transition Efforts is a timely contribution to the project of theorizing "Europe" through decolonial perspectives on the Left, as the European and global crisis has prompted new reflections on what it means to sit still at the European "peripheries". The book explores how the joint scholarship efforts of postcolonial and postsocialist scholars might come up with better-grounded and more detailed theoretical and methodological insights into the process of globalization, and subsequent peripheralization, if framed under a progressive and leftist perspective. The authors, many from the South-East Europe region, use a variety of analytical lenses to demonstrate how the nexus of postcolonial, postsocialist area studies and progressive developmental political thought could inspire changes in the future which are in dissonance with neoliberal and neoconservative capitalism. As the side effects of global capitalism continue to accelerate, scholars and activists in the postsocialist periphery are increasingly turning to the concept of decoloniality in the hope it might offer more options on how to begin to build up their framework. This book offers numerous examples of how decolonial theory can be applied to activist work in the fight against austerity and neo-liberalization, as well as examples of how decolonial critique can be mobilized to contest processes of Europeanization and Euro-Atlantic integration. This book will intrigue students and scholars of critical social scholarship in general, postsocialism, postcolonialism, critiques of right populism and the rise of white nationalism in Europe, as well as those studying the regions of South-Eastern Europe and Eurasia more generally. It will also interest activists, organizers, decision-makers, policy analysts, and leftists, both in the region and internationally.

Download or read book Democracy's Paradox written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does populism indicate a radical crisis in Western democratic political systems? Is it a revolt by those who feel they have too little voice in the affairs of state or are otherwise marginalized or oppressed? Or are populist movements part of the democratic process? Bringing together different anthropological experiences of current populist movements, this volume makes a timely contribution to these questions. Contrary to more conventional interpretations of populism as crisis, the authors instead recognize populism as integral to Western democratic systems. In doing so, the volume provides an important critique that exposes the exclusionary essentialisms spread by populist rhetoric while also directing attention to local views of political accountability and historical consciousness that are key to understanding this paradox of democracy.