Legitimising populist education in Israel: The role of religion

Abstract

This article analyses two case studies from the Israeli education system that demonstrate how religious themes and language are used in service of populist politics. First, 'Being Citizens in Israel' is the standard high school civics textbook that underwent a major revision in 2015. The second case study focuses on new school programmes that focus on the rebuilding of the Third Jewish temple, and the inclusion of references to the Third Temple in other school subject curricula. Both cases were analysed using Brubaker's terminology, specifically highlighting elements of majoritarinism, anti-institutionalism and protectionism that are especially relevant to the Israeli case. The majoritarian and protectionist elements are dominant within these cases, and convey a set of transcendental ideals in the name of an imagined collectivity that is conceived as superior, sacred, pure, with a historic mission in a manner that antagonises minorities, liberal sensibilities and democratic principles. The anti-institutionalism element is not explicitly present, yet an implicit contextual presence is discussed.

A Corpus‐Based Discourse Analysis of Liberal Studies Textbooks in Hong Kong: Legitimatizing Populism

“…These authors found that the textbooks highlighted the dangers of Hong Kong's assimilation to the Chinese mainland, inculcating in readers a rejection of almost everything about China. These findings echo those of Silberberg and Agbaria (2021) regarding the heightened division between the insider group (Hong Kongers) and the outsider group (those of the Chinese mainland) from a populist viewpoint, as well as Moffit and Tormey's (2014) descriptors of the key elements of populist style: the notion of crisis (depicting China's assimilation of Hong Kong in the LST) and disseminating "bad manners" in political discourse (commending radical protests in the LST). These LST may thus be suspected of contributing to populist views.…”

“…The LST corpus analysis also revealed language discouraging the self-acknowledgement of Chinese identity, also echoing Li and Wu (2022), who asserted that LST directly called for Hong Kong people to distance their identity from that of mainland Chinese. These findings demonstrate a key feature of populism, heightened division between the inner and outer groups (Silberberg & Agbaria, 2021). Therefore, the textbooks can be understood as containing populist elements that exclude the outer group, China, from the local inner group, Hong Kong.…”

“…Therefore, populism today is not only about the masses resisting the elite, but also describes the building of boundaries in the name of the masses to exclude the people (i.e., majority-insiders) from the threatening others (i.e., minority-outsiders). Relevant examples include Israel, where religious populism led the majority insider-Jewish citizens to exclude Arab citizens (Silberberg & Agbaria, 2021); Zimbabwe, where neoliberal populism excluded anyone, including Zimbabwe nationals, with Western backgrounds in favour of insidermajority Black Africans with no Western education (Hwami, 2013); and the US, where Trump-led racist populism excluded Asian international students and immigrants from membership with insider-white majority US citizens (Kirby, 2021).…”

“…Norris and Inglehart (2019) and Spruyt (2014) opined that people with higher education are less likely to hold populist opinions, and Saurette and Gunster's (2011, p. 199) explanation of the source of academic knowledge may indicate why highly educated people are unlikely to be populists, as academics belong to the elite. However, recent studies, including those by Hwami (2013) and Silberberg and Agbaria (2021), have demonstrated that populism has infiltrated higher and pre-tertiary education systems. Meanwhile, Hong Kong university students' participation in radical populist groups (Ng & Kennedy, 2019) and the divisive contrasts between Hong Kongers and Chinese mainlanders in LST suggest that populism might have infiltrated some aspects of Hong Kong's educational system.…”