Are contemporary populist movements hijacking religion?

Abstract

Populism has emerged over the past 15 years as perhaps the fastest growing political force in Europe and as a major influence throughout the Western world. From its beginnings in the late 1970s, right-wing populist parties have been able to capture the votes of people negatively affected by deindustrialisation and immigration, and who felt angry and disillusioned with their national governments (Betz 1993, 413–427). Because populism is linked to feelings of anger and disillusionment—to employment security, and to a feeling that one’s culture and lifestyle is threatened by immigration and social change—as long as the vast majority of citizens felt secure in their societies and positive about their future prosperity, populist parties would remain on the fringes of Western politics. Today, however, it is clear that many Europeans and Americans do not feel secure in their own societies or positive about their own—or indeed their nations’—future. The causes of this present-day disillusionment are not difficult to identify. Increasing income inequality, technological and cultural change, and employment insecurity have undoubtedly played an important role in the rise of populist movements. Yet perhaps just as important is the growing presence of Islam in Europe—a presence which seems threatening to many Europeans—and the series of Islamist terror attacks on civilian targets in France, Germany, and Belgium. It is perhaps not surprising then that since 2008 populist—especially right-wing populist—parties have experienced a period of extraordinary growth. After all, parties such as the Danish People’s Party, the French Front National, the UK Independence Party, and the Dutch Party for Freedom—all which have experienced electoral success at a national and European level—have denounced failed centrist neoliberal politics and the parties which uphold them. The great bulk of “the people,” they claim, have been ill served by globalisation, and by the centre-right and centre-left consensus which has de-industrialised much of Europe, encouraged mass immigration, and supported multiculturalism. Right-wing populists have vowed to govern on behalf of “the people,” to stop Muslim immigration, to protect manufacturing industries, and promote Judeo-Christian or Christian values