Ο λαϊκισμός στα εθνικά θέματα

Abstract

Populism has become a part of the Greek political vocabulary during the 1980s and it has come to represent notions of national issues. In this extremely hazy field, populist discourse and attitudes linked quickly with hard-shell opinions about the country’s relations with its neighbours and allies, as well as other political questions that have remained unanswered for decades. After a series of political changes in the 1990s, populism had become synonymous to anti-European and anti-Western feelings. The mass media intentionally or not projected populism as the rival to the rising ‘modernisation”. This fact hindered a true and substantial discourse, offering an alibi to the ‘wave of modernisation’ and various pro-European intellectuals, who put forth ideas that were not always typical of the rationalism they were supposed to serve. Recent developments in world politics along with their impact on the Greek public opinion woke up the nationalist reflexes of left-wing parties and intellectuals, who had been worn off by the sterilised anti-Europeanism of the 1980s and the collapse of the much advertised potential ally, the Eastern Bloc. In the new political and economical context, the appeal of internationalism, which defined the discourse of the Left until then, had become unseasonable. The new ‘popular’ strategy to approach those who would feel marginalized in the new environment entailed a readjustment of the nation’s political positions. This strategy proved to be very successful as the continuous interventions by the USA and NATO in several countries offered the necessary justification for the dynamic re-emergence of the Left, providing a much larger audience than its real strength. However, this success called for a great ideological price.