Far-right intellectuals
on the potentials of populism

Far-right intellectuals on the potentials of populism: The case of the German Institut für Staatspolitik

Published on 4 July 2024

Omran Shroufi

Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Communication Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Benjamin De Cleen

Associate professor, Department of Communication Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Whilst anti-populism dominates the political and academic mainstream, a positive conception of populism has been a source of theorising and strategizing among left-wing academics and activists, with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe being two of the most prominent examples. These debates for and against left-wing populism are well-known and well-studied. What is far less known, however, is how the right thinks about populism. Despite broad agreement that many contemporary far-right parties are populist, there has been little analysis of the far-right’s own theoretical reflections on and strategic engagement with populism. Also, in recent work analysing discourses about populism, reflections on the far-right’s own discourse about populism have been rare. Whilst it is certainly true that the far-right’s reflections on populism have been less sustained than those on the left, there is much more to be found in terms of right-wing strategic considerations about populism than is commonly assumed, with such considerations going well beyond the strategic appropriation of the populism label by far-right figureheads in response to accusations of populism. 

European far-right politicians from the AfD’s Alexander Gauland to Timo Soini of the Finns Party have written about populism, the latter even dedicating an entire book to the topic. Whilst not entirely fitting the far-right label, the US Republicans’ turn to populism was also accompanied by writings on the topic, going back to the early 1970s. More theoretically informed explorations of populism can be found in far-right intellectual circles. The well-known French far-right intellectual Alain de Benoist, to give one example, published a book in 2017 called Le moment populiste: droite-gauche, c’est fini (The populist moment: right-left, it’s finished), defending the idea that a ‘people’/‘elite’ cleavage was replacing the left/right one as the defining divide. Far-right reflections on populism, in other words, deserve more attention than has been the case so far. 

To better understand what far-right intellectual musings about populism look like, our recent open-access study focused on the German new right (Neue Rechte) think tank and cadre school the Institut für Staatspolitik (Institute for State Policy – IfS). The IfS is a fitting example of the fact that the far-right is not simply reacting to political opportunities created by the failures of their opponents, or the supposed latent demands of ‘the people’, but also actively engaging with, reacting to, and attempting to shape the political and cultural zeitgeist. Whilst the IfS is not officially affiliated with the Alternative für Deutschland, it has strong links with the völkisch nationalist wing of the party, led by figures such as Björn Höcke, leader of the party in the state of Thuringia, and the now-officially disbanded extreme right faction ‘der Flügel’. Analysing articles dedicated to populism in the IfS’ main publications between 2003 and 2020, we focused on how the IfS thinks about populism and the potential strategic gains to be had from adopting a populist strategy. Indeed, for the far-right intellectuals and activists writing for the IfS, populism is not just a pejorative label, but a source of serious political strategizing. 

What we found were far-right intellectuals well acquainted with mainstream debates about the supposed dangers populism posed to the established political order. However, rather than worry about this, being labelled as a populist was treated as a badge of honour: it seemingly showed their opponents were rattled and had to resort to name-calling. These far-right thinkers did not simply sit by idly while being labelled ‘populist’ but sought to turn the accusation on its head and argue that such practices revealed the ruling political elite were out of touch with the ‘man on the street’. 

Yet more than this, the IfS authors closely followed the example of left-wing populist movements and studied key texts about (left-wing) populist strategy, in particular the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In ways similar to the far-right’s engagement with the work of other left-wing theorists such as Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony, what was striking was the way the IfS authors watched the political successes and failures of left-wing populist movements, and analysed left-wing populist theory, to identify strategies and ideas to be borrowed and adopted by the right. While there has long been talk of ‘Gramscians of the right’, our study suggests there might also be some far-right thinkers who could be thought of as ‘Laclau and Mouffians of the right’. In a move similar to their turn to Gramsci, this demonstrates how far-right actors can successfully hijack and employ a populist strategy initially devised to bolster left-wing movements.

The IfS argues that far-right movements are better placed to pursue a populist strategy because they, as nationalists, supposedly have a more innate understanding of who ‘the people’ truly are. That is to say, rather than subscribing to what they consider the left’s misguided, open and inclusive notion of ‘the people’, they argue that nationalists are better populists. While theorists such as Laclau and Mouffe, rooted in a post-structuralist paradigm, emphasise the discursively constructed nature of ‘the people’, the IfS authors favour a more primordial and instinctive conception of ‘the people’ rooted in national and ethnic identity (symbolised by their embrace of the term ‘Volk’, which in Germany is still associated with Nazi Germany). While such nativist and essentialist conceptualisations of ‘the people’ contradict the ontological foundations of Laclau and Mouffe’s position, for the IfS writers, denying that ‘the people’ do exist prior to any discursive articulation is deemed the fundamental weakness of left-wing populisms. As Benedikt Kaiser, an upcoming figure within German far-right intellectual circles and author of several texts on populism that engage with left-wing theory, writes in a review of Mouffe’s For a Left Populism: ‘The permanent reference to a “people” and its democratic sovereignty hardly conceals [the fact] that Mouffe cannot explain what makes up a “people”’.

Our study of the IfS shows that far-right discussions about populism are not simply a means to provoke or to re-signify a pejorative term. Instead, serious and in-depth discussions tap into current theoretical debates on populism and there is a readiness to learn, borrow and apply insights from left-wing theories of populism in line with an older tradition of ‘learning from the other side’ embodied by the Nouvelle Droite. Whilst the importance of organisations such as the IfS should not be overstated, our study does show that some far-right intellectuals and activists have engaged in conscious and theoretically informed reflections on populism. With the field of populism studies rather saturated in many ways, there seems to be some space still for the study of (far) right-wing reflections on populism, in the context of the most recent ‘populist moment’ but also from a more historical perspective.