Three Types of Culture Wars and the Populist Strategies in Central Europe

Abstract

Since the ‘migration crisis’ in 2015 at the latest, the politics of a broadly conceived Central Europe has been marked by conflicts over symbols, values and norms. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Austria, and the Czech Republic have witnessed divisive debates and campaigns over refugee quotas, women’s and gay rights, abortion laws and public monuments. As the term ‘culture wars’ was becoming ubiquitous, it remained ambivalent in its meaning and usage. The aim of this article is to identify a political logic of recent Central European cultural conflicts without leaning solely on the ideological explanation, e.g. the anti-liberal backlash thesis of Rupnik, and Krastev and Holms. By borrowing R. Brubaker’s conceptualizations of identity and populism, the article contends that it is possible to analyze culture wars as a repertoire of a populist political style. To do so, the article develops a critical perspective on culture wars, defined as polarizing conflicts in the arenas of the politics of memory, politics of identity and politics of morality. Culture wars are analyzed as a strategy of re-politicization of memory (especially of World War II), (civilizational) identity and public morality and a code used in struggles for political and cultural hegemony.

The Orbán regime as the ‘perfect autocracy’: The emergence of the ‘zombie democracy’ in Hungary

“…In the strange mixture of the new Orwellian ideological factoryas e.g. combining the pagan and Christian traditions in the Fidesz ideological campaigns -this complete social capture in Hungary after the 2018 elections has been managed by a tough state control in its largest meaning through the aggressive 'privatisation' of the cultural sector (see the comparative ECE analysis in Hesová, 2021).…”

Sudeten German Landsmanshaft or the Support of Immigration? Germany as a Source of Threat in the Rhetorics of Miloš Zeman

“…(Košťálová, 2012;Kesylytė-Alliks, 2017) Prominentní postavení má v tomto ohledu druhá světová válka. (Hesová, 2021;Naxera, Krčál, 2021) Princip vytváření "těch jiných", tedy určování skupin, jež nejsou součástí "nás", respektive "them-and-us" mentalita (Knight, 1998, s. 223), je pak podle řady 2 Navzdory tomu, že se v anglickými pojmy "the others" a "othering" setkáváme i v českých textech, rozhodl jsem se využít jejich české ekvivalenty, tedy "ti jiní" a "vytváření jiných". 3 Jde o podobný princip, se kterými pracuje i tzv.…”

Post-Socialist Political Necromancy: Weaponization of Dead Bodies in Czech Culture Wars

“…As we already know, these struggles not only in Central Europe are mainly associated with three areas (Hesová 2021b)identity politics (mainly in relation to migration; e.g., Kalmar 2018), moral politics (primarily the topics of gender or sexual minorities; e.g., Żuk and Żuk 2020 1 ), and memory politics (mainly, though not exclusively, in relation to the Second World War and the former communist regime; e.g., Naxera and Krčál 2021). The large-scale controversies about memory politics that are of primary interest to us in this article can be seen in all Central European countries they have resonated most strongly and for the longest time in Poland (e.g., Stryjek and Konieczna-Sałamatin 2021;Belavusau 2018) and Hungary (e.g., Benazzo 2017), and somewhat less strongly in Slovakia and the Czech Republic (e.g., Tomczuk 2016).…”

“…Given its prominent position within collective memory, it is the Second World War that has become a frequent subject of disputes within the culture wars (cf. Hesová 2021b).…”

“…Disputes about the communist regime have been a part of Czech society throughout its evolution since the fall of the regime (Mayerová 2009). In recent years, disputes over the interpretation of the past have deepened and focused on the pre-communist periods, including the Second World War (Hesová 2021b). Typically, however, discussions about the pre-communist past tend to be linked to discussions about the communist regime (Tomczuk 2016).…”