This article provides an empirical exploration of the relation between nationalism and populism on the left of the political spectrum. The Spanish party Podemos is a key case study for such an analysis, as it is a left-populist actor that has made extensive use of nationalist rhetoric in its discourse. Through a discourse analysis on a corpus that
This article empirically explores how populist actors talk about the nation. This is a research area mostly tackled in studies on right‐wing populism, with other forms of populist politics usually left out of the analysis. To fill this academic gap, we focus on the Spanish party Podemos and the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S). The former is a paradigmatic example of radical left populism, whereas the latter is commonly considered as a catch‐all populist party with no clear ideological connotation. Through a discourse analysis on leaders' speeches and official public declarations, we focus on the role that national identity plays in the strategies of Podemos and M5S and on the type of nation they discursively construct. Whilst Podemos' populist strategy purposely aims at contending to the right ideologically loaded concepts and signifiers to construct an idea of nation fitting the party's leftist values, M5S's strategy mostly aims at appropriating valence issues, such as the “Made in Italy” brand and the concept of “national interest”. Thus, our analysis contributes to clarify the differences between the leftist political culture of Podemos and the “post‐ideological” one of M5S, as also reflected by survey data confirming strong differences in “nationalist” attitudes between their respective electorates.
In a recent article in this journal, Josep Lobera and Juan Roch formulate a thoughtful critique of scholarly works on the nationalist dimension of left‐wing populist discourses, and, in their analysis on Podemos, they engage especially with my works on the subject. They argue that not only do Podemos supporters express lower levels of national identification than the rest of the Spanish population, but also that, coherently with its electorate, Podemos avoids talking about issues related to Spanish identity and exhibits a non‐nationalist or even anti nationalist narrative. Contrarily, in my studies I found that Podemos has made extensive use of nationalist rhetoric. In this article I briefly respond to their critique, further clarifying the findings of my works and explaining why they do not match with the findings of Lobera and Roch. More broadly, I see this response as a chance to contribute to the further development of the recent and vibrant scholarly debate on the Left and its relation to nationalism.
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