Religion and right-wing populism in Italy: using ‘Judeo-Christian roots’ to kill the European Union

Molle, Andrea

doi:10.4324/9780429284663-9

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Christianity is mentioned on five occasions in the 2014 manifesto of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, and the party platform contains a whole section on the party’s relations with the Catholic Church, denouncing attacks on Catholic Church and warning that “the only alternative for Catholic moral teaching in Poland is nihilism” (PiS, 2014: 11). Similarly, under Salvini’s leadership, the Italian Lega has “embraced Christianity” and promotes Catholicism “as the first line of resistance against both immigration and a secular, European identity” (Molle, 2019: 154). The manifesto of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) contains four references to Christianity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Marcinkiewicz

Dassonneville

2021

Party Politics

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The rise of populist radical right parties fuels a discussion about the roots of their success. Existing research has demonstrated the relevance of gender, education and income for explaining the far-right vote. The present study contributes to the aforementioned debate by focusing on the role of religiosity. The data collected in the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016) allow examining in more detail the political relevance of attendance at religious services and other measures of religious devotion. This study focuses in particular on 15 countries, 11 from Western Europe and 4 from East-Central Europe. In none of the Western European countries is there evidence of a positive relationship between religiosity and vote for a populist radical right party. In fact, in many countries of this region more religious voters are substantively less inclined to support far-right movements. The situation is different in parts of East-Central Europe. In Poland, and to a weaker extent also in Hungary, the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Marcinkiewicz

Dassonneville

2021

Party Politics

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“…However, research on the effect of Christian values in Western Europe has showed mixed results. In some cases, being religious implied negative attitudes toward religious minorities; in others, it showed higher levels of tolerance towards possible “outgroups” (Molle, 2019).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Values Priorities and Support for Populism in Europe—An Analysis of Personal Motivations Underpinning Support for Populist Parties in Europe

Baro

2022

Political Psychology

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Several studies have shown that there are populist attitudes associated with voting for these parties, across leftand right-wing ideologies. As political attitudes and opinions are rooted in people's personal values, this study analyzes the commonalities in the values priorities of populist supporters. The values underlying the vote for populists are reflected in the ideological core of populism, the antagonistic divide between "us"-the peopleand "them"-the foreigners and the elite. This article theorizes that voting for populist parties is linked with lower support for self-transcendent values, as they express altruism, tolerance, and pluralism, contradicting the populist claims of exclusionist power of the "people" over "the others." Evidence of this relationship is found using European Social Survey data. The study applies logistic multilevel and multinomial regression models. Findings confirm that voting for populist parties is associated with lower support for self-transcendent values and high support in conservation values, across left and right ideologies.

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“…A second strand of the politicization of religion by populist parties and leaders consists of taking religion as a structuring source of cultural identity, the presentation of which also implies the display of emotions and passions. It is particularly used in the European Union to shape conflict with Islam; the defense of a culturally inherited Christian Europe being one of the only common denominators among radical-right parties and Identitarian circles in the secularized society of the EU (Caiani 2018; Hafez and Heinisch 2018; Zúquete 2018; Molle 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019; Schwörer and Romero-Vidal 2020). These expressed Christian-rooted values can be liberal, such as in France or the Netherlands (with a marked distancing from Christian authorities), or conservative, as in Central Europe where populist parties can develop a religious nationalism with the support of top-level clerics (Roy 2016; Arato and Cohen 2017; Brubaker 2017).…”

Section: Radical Right Populism and Christianity: A Discursive Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orbán Urbi et Orbi: Christianity as a Nodal Point of Radical-right Populism

Lamour

2021

Politics and Religion

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There is one European state leader from the moderate Christian-democrat center right who has developed a discourse and policies showing his progressive move toward the radical right: Viktor Orbán. Can Christianity be considered from a Laclauian perspective, as a “nodal point” of Orbán's radical right discourse; that is, a key element around which his antagonistic narratives are structured? Based on an analysis of segments of Orbán's speeches between 2014 and 2019 that mention Christianity, the research reveals that this religion is a nodal point for three main reasons: (1) the density of Christian references used to shape a negative and antagonistic discourse, strategically adjusted to his audience; (2) the use of Christianity to ground the three ideological pillars of the radical right (populism, nativism, and authoritarianism); and (3) the mobilization of Christianity to organize a hegemonic struggle against the dominant political force that has defined the meaning of this religion in the European public sphere—the moderate center right.

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Religion and right-wing populism in Italy: using ‘Judeo-Christian roots’ to kill the European Union

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Personal Values Priorities and Support for Populism in Europe—An Analysis of Personal Motivations Underpinning Support for Populist Parties in Europe

Orbán Urbi et Orbi: Christianity as a Nodal Point of Radical-right Populism

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