Authors

Gustav Lundberg¹;  ¹ Södertörn University, Sweden

Discussion

Although the distinction between Eastern ethnic and Western civic nationalism – as (in)famously proposed by Hans Kohn – is subject to regular critique, the assumption that nationalist parties are categorically different remains. In this paper, I join a growing body of scholarship challenging the notion that nationalist parties in post-socialist states are inherently different given their preoccupation with national minorities, in contrast to nationalists in the West focusing on migration. Recently, scholars such as Jan Rovny have pointed to increasing similarities between far-right parties in the post-socialist space and those in older democracies in Western Europe. This body of scholarship argues that since 2015, far-right parties in post-socialist states have increasingly shifted their political focus towards migration from the global south and the rising level of labour migration, moving away from of targeting national minorities.

However, this paper explores the inverse notion of Western far-right parties emulating their post-socialist counterparts. Drawing on the recent successes of a new strand of political movements seeking to build political communities around Muslim or immigrant identities in countries – such as Denk in the Netherlands, Team Fouad Ahidar in Belgium and The Muslim Vote in the United Kingdom – I examine how Western nationalist parties are responding to this new type of ethnic mobilization. The paper compares these novel movements to minority parties in the CEE region, and specifically their relationship with nationalist parties, asking the following questions: in what ways are these novel political movements in Western democracies comparable to traditional post-socialist minority parties? How do Western far-right parties respond to these new challengers, and in what ways – if any – do they emulate the strategies and rationale of their colleagues from the post-socialist political space?