Latin American inclusive and European exclusionary populism: colonialism as an explanation

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1 Journal of Political Ideologies, 2015 Vol. 20, No. 3, , Latin American inclusive and European exclusionary populism: colonialism as an explanation DANI FILC Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva , Israel Abstract: The article addresses the fact that Latin-American populism is mostly inclusive and European populism mostly exclusionary, and argues that colonialism is an important key to understanding the development of either form of populism. Following a characterization of populism and of the links between colonialism and the conceptualization of the people, the article analyses Peronism and Le Pen s Front National as case studies to support its claim. Among the most representative and most studied examples of the Latin-American populism, Peronism has remained a significant force for almost 70 years. Le Pen s movement is one of the first and most important European radical right populist movements. Finally, the article shows how those important cases are part of a much broader picture, in which the role within the colonial relationship shapes the development of either exclusionary or inclusive populism. Introduction In their joint work on populism, Mudde and Rowira-Kaltwasser argue that comparative analysis of this phenomenon must consider its expression in terms of inclusion vs. exclusion. 1 The present paper agrees with this claim and contends that in addition, colonialism constitutes a main parameter for explaining the development of either inclusive or exclusionary populism. It help us understand, for example, Juan Domingo Peron s opposition to the local elites with their expectant and reverent attitude towards a [European] civilization embodied in alien cultural patterns, 2 and his view of Peronism as resulting from [the combination of] a European inheritance and a specific Latin American one. 3 It also helps us understand Jean Marie Le Pen s antipathy to the ideology of mettisage, which he claimed represents a threat to the security of the French. 4 Populism is a political phenomenon that, as Margaret Canovan so aptly describes, haunts liberal democracy and other elitist forms of government like a shadow. 5 The modern notion of populism first emerged in the late 19th century both in the US 2015 Taylor & Francis

2 dani filc and in the Russian empire. The American People s Party and Russian Narodism represented political movements based on the idea that the people are the source of virtue and good, and that society is divided into two camps that of the true people, and that of the people s enemies. In the mid-1900s, populist movements reappeared, especially in Latin America, where they played a central role for more than three decades. However, the military dictatorships suffered by South American countries during the 1970s and the subsequent democratization processes of the 1980s seemed to extinguish the populist phenomenon, so much so that the concept all but disappeared from political science literature. Nonetheless, since the 1990s, populist parties and movements have once again taken centre stage of the political scene, not only in Latin-America, but also in Europe. Populist parties have been in office, joined government coalitions or emerged as parts of an active and significant opposition, rendering populism once again one of the most dynamic political phenomena. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of the populist phenomenon today, the term is not easily defined. 6 Building on Canovan s suggestion that populism can be better understood as a family of phenomena, this paper considers populism as divisible into two main types based on whether they follow a general doctrine of inclusive or, as Hans Betz called it, exclusionary, populism. 7 Mudde and Rovira-Kaltwasser declared that inclusion vs. exclusion is probably the most important aspect of the cross-regional comparison. 8 Cross-regional comparison shows that European populism is mostly exclusionary 9, while Latin-American populism is inclusive. 10 The present research attempts to show that the phenomenon of colonialism helps to explain this notable difference between the Western European and Latin- American expressions of populism. While colonialism cannot provide a single and whole explanation for all the expressions of populism in Latin America and Western Europe, since inclusive populism appears mostly in colonized countries and exclusionary populism in former colonialist ones, the article argues that colonialism is an important key to understanding the development of either form of populism. The article will analyse Peronism and Le Pen s Front National (FN) as examples that lend support to this claim. The selection of cases is based on the fact that those are the most salient movements among Latin American and Western European populism. Peronism is arguably the most representative and most studied example of the populist phenomenon in Latin-America. Peronism has been and still is a significant force for almost 70 years both in government and in opposition. The FN is one of the first and most influential populist movements since the emergence of radical right populism in Europe in the 1990s, and under Marine Le Pen s leadership has emerged in the last European elections as France s most voted-for party. Inclusive and exclusionary populism Populism has been defined as a loose ideology, combining according to different scholars nostalgia for a primordial community, the belief in the people as 264

3 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism virtuous, xenophobia and welfare chauvinism. 11 Alternatively, it has been considered a political style characterized by the belief in the supremacy of the will of the people, 12 being moralistic rather than programmatic, anti-intellectual, 13 based on mystical contact between leaders and the masses, loosely organized, opposed to the establishment and supported by a multi-class constituency. 14 The present article considers the populist phenomenon as a political project that combines some common ideological premises making the analysis of populism s discursive aspects central and that emerges in societies where conflicts around the inclusion/exclusion of subordinated groups are central. Mudde s thin definition of populism understands it as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the pure people and the corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté generale of the people. 15 But how exactly the people is defined must be clarified before the opposition between the people and the elites can be investigated. Margaret Canovan proposes three different definitions for the concept: the people as sovereign, peoples as nations and the people as opposed to the ruling elite (what used to be called the common people). 16 Canovan also argues that in English, people also refers to the individuals, a reference that though grammatically separated influences the understanding of the people as a collective in two senses. First, introducing a tension between the people as an aggregation of individualities and the people as a collective body; second, giving the term a universal meaning that transcends national boundaries. Populist ideology builds on the polysemic character of the concept, using its alternative meanings as if they were one and the same. The contradictions between the different meanings are erased and the people is likewise the sovereign people, the plebs as opposed to the elites, the nation as a whole, and, as Guy Hermet notes, also an organic group (which sometimes means an ethno-national community, as expressed by the German term Volk). 17 Populist movements and leaders alternate between the signified they attach to the signifier people. However, stressing one of its meanings, does not mean leaving the others out, since one of the elements that grounds populism s success is precisely the ability to articulate the four meanings discursively. The four significances of the term people can be articulated in more than one way. The diverse ways in which this is done differentiate between inclusive and exclusionary populism. Inclusive populist movements stress the notion of the people as plebeians, thereby allowing the political integration of excluded social groups and, in the process, enlarging the boundaries of democracy. 18 In providing the means for subordinated social groups to constitute themselves as political subjects, inclusive populist movements become the way by which these groups overcome their exclusion. Inclusion, however, is always partial, first of all because populist movements do not structurally modify the unequal distribution of resources, and second, because the claim for inclusion is based on a particularistic statement ( we are the people, too ) and not on a universal one. In contrast, exclusionary populism emphasizes the organic understanding of the people as an ethnically or culturally homogeneous unit. 19 As such, it 265

4 dani filc conceptualizes the people from a nativist perspective, which promotes the belief that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the nation widely held to be the native group, and that non-native persons and ideas represent a threat. 20 Understood thus, exclusionary populism expresses how certain social groups confront the threat of exclusion and subsequent dissolution of their identity and subjectivity by excluding weaker groups, that is, migrant workers or ethnic minorities. Similarly to the partial character of inclusion noted earlier, exclusion is also partial, since many of the social groups that support exclusionary populism see in those movements a protection of their own exclusion (i.e. welfare chauvinism). Inclusive and exclusionary processes have symbolic, material and political dimensions. 21 Symbolic inclusion takes place when the excluded group becomes part of the common we through its symbolic inclusion in the collective effected by the polysemic articulation of the signifier people. Inclusive populist movements use the word people simultaneously to denote the whole nation and the plebeians, the common people. The rhetoric and rituals characteristic of inclusive populist movements mass rallies, identification with the leader, the rhetoric of us vs. them, and the appeal to a mythical common past are all strategies that instil a sense of belonging. As such, they provide the excluded with recognition and selfworth cultivated by a narrative that positions them at the centre of the nation. 22 Inclusive populist leaders and movements develop a narrative in which some of the excluded social groups are presented as a central part of we, the people. US populists in the late 19th century explicitly included excluded groups (such as poor farmers and industrial workers) in their enumeration of who the people are. 23 Latin-American populist movements postulated different excluded groups (the poor, the natives, the working class, the dark skinned ) as the core of the virtuous people. 24 Populism constitutes the excluded group as a major component of the common we, usually in opposition either to the external or the internal other (i.e. the foreign enemy or the elites, respectively). The role of the leader in inclusive populist movements is pivotal, since he or she becomes the embodiment of the excluded group. Through their discourse and political success, populist leaders constitutes the group (as a politically included subject), and the group, in turn, creates them as successful leaders and as the group s representative. 25 When inclusive populist movements gain government, their presence usually improves the material conditions of subordinate groups in two ways. First, insofar as discrimination against the excluded group diminishes and the group becomes part of the common we, its participation in the distribution of income and wealth increases. Material inclusion may also take place via a decrease of occupational segregation, an increase in access to benefits in kind, and the implementation of policies aimed at improving the excluded group s situation. Second, many inclusive populist movements, for example in first and third-wave Latin American populisms, implemented economic policies that promote economic growth, full employment, and income redistribution. In addition, inclusive populist movements promote and support the active political participation of previously excluded groups via three mechanisms. First, as 266

5 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism participation in the populist movement grants members of the formerly excluded group access to political power (at the local level, as members of parliament, and even as ministers), they become part of the populist movement s leadership. 28 Second, and more importantly, the excluded group, which existed in an objectified mode, undergoes a process of subjectivation as it becomes an active collective political subject that cannot be ignored. 29 Third, populism repoliticizes issues that had been depoliticized and transformed into professional or technocratic questions (e.g. the modification of the Central Bank of Argentina s Organic Chart in The new chart abolishes the independence of the central bank and clearly specifies socio-political goals for the Central Bank). Similar to inclusive populism, exclusionary populism also operates in the symbolic, material and political dimensions. Symbolic exclusion is grounded in an exclusionary understanding of the people. Exclusionary movements appeal to a common past in which immigrants or ethnic minorities do not belong, and they resort to historical symbols that are irrelevant to certain groups (as in the case of Joan of Arc in France), to regional dialects, and so on. 30 Nativism plays an often vital role in the exclusionary vision, since according to nativist conceptions, immigrants (mostly from former colonies) do not belong to the nation/people. 31 In time, xenophobia and racism develop out of, and help propagate, exclusionary nativism (as shown by Betz in the cases of the Italian Lega Nord, the Austrian Freedom Party and the People s party in Switzerland). 32 Immigrants and other subordinate groups suffer from material exclusion, for example access to welfare services and entitlements. Welfare chauvinism can be exploited to protect those social sectors belonging to the majority that are threatened by the transformations associated with globalization processes. Haider s Freedom Party, for example, claimed that in order to cope with the growing costs of welfare services, Austria should abolish benefits for immigrants. 33 On the political dimension, exclusion involves limiting immigrant access to citizenship, hindering the ability of subordinate groups to organize, and criminalizing excluded social groups. Access to citizenship is constrained by immigration regulations that deny immigrants the right to vote or that pose obstacles to their access to citizenship (e.g. the banning of dual citizenship). Moreover, the persecution of the excluded groups leadership or the medicalization of protest thwarts the capacity of these groups to organize. 34 Conceptualizing the populist phenomenon as comprising both inclusive and exclusionary elements brings us to ask which conditions are specific to the emergence of either form of populism. The article s claim is that the colonial relationship, even though does not provide an explanation for any single case, is central to answering this question. Colonialism and the conceptualization of the people Research has shown that colonialism was based on the systematic exclusion of the colonized. The notion of the people in colonial contexts was therefore, inherently 267

6 dani filc exclusionary political, cultural and economic conceptions designated the boundaries of difference and privilege that divided the colonizers from the colonized. Colonial projects seek to legitimize and institutionalize relations of exploitation through the construction of racial hierarchies of difference that both justify and perpetuate the colonial agenda. Practices of exclusion were at the core of the different colonialist projects, as the very possibility of inclusion would threaten the unhindered plundering and exploitation at the root of colonial rule. 35 The legitimation of the colonial institutional system and of colonial profits was ensconced in the belief that colonizers and colonized were distinguished by irreducible differences. Among the symbols cited as proof of the dissimilarities between colonizer and colonized, race was chosen as the most obvious. 36 Thus, racism became an inherent characteristic of colonialism, a system grounded in the systemic rankings of peoples. 37 Both in its institutional dimension and as the differential constitution of identity, racism fixed the different expressions of the relationship between colonizer and colonized as a rigid hierarchy of difference that established and perpetuated economic, cultural and social inequalities. 38 From the Americas to Africa to South-East Asia, belief in the racial superiority of the white man seems to have underpinned colonial rule. 39 Colonizer superiority did not automatically and eternally emerge from the fact of conquest, however, as otherness was unstable and had to be continually reasserted via the practices and ideologies of exclusion. 40 While the colonial situation was characterized by hybridity and variation, in the European metropolis Manichean dichotomies had a remarkable sustaining power and were even more significant 41 Colonial racism, therefore, played, and still plays, a role in the way in which people in Europe defined themselves and constructed a common we that overcame class differences and discrepant interests There exists a strong relationship between the reaffirmation of European distinctiveness and the incorporation of sectors among the popular classes into some form of citizenship and recognition of their place in the political community. 44 As such, the forging of Homo Europaeus as a racial category signifying the colonizer distinct and superior to the other racial groups of the colonized was related to notions of national belonging and cultural criteria for citizenship in the European countries. 45 However, the naturalization of difference was not limited to the present colonial situation. Difference is posited as eternal, beginning in the past and extending into the future. 46 Race and nation are considered integral parts of destiny, both for the individual and for the collective, a notion exemplified by the following quote from Ernest Renan, the 19th-century French historian and theoretician of the concept of nation: The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity. With us, the common man is nearly always a déclassé nobleman; his heavy hand is better suited to handling the sword than the menial tool. Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be 268

7 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. 47 Not unexpectedly, the colonial relationship indelibly influenced the constitutions of European nation states and the modern ideas of demos and citizenship. Indeed, the colonial relationship helped establish the conceptualization of exclusionary notions of people, nation, political community, sovereignty and citizenship. 48 At a structural level, the economy, the state institutions, and the development of the idea of citizenship, including the establishment of the welfare state, rested on the unequal relationship between the centre and its peripheral colonies. 49 The constitution of the demos was defined and limited by the colonial relationship. Colonialism established two differentiated worlds, the metropolitan polity for which ideas such as the sovereign people, democratic citizenship and rights were relevant; and an external sphere for which they were not, as large social groups were considered as lying outside of the people. 50 A liberal conception of we the people as plural coexisted with an organic conception, and the divisory line was the colonial relationship. As Mann argues, the settlers recognized themselves as divided into diverse interests and classes, and their political parties represented this diversity amid liberal institutions. On the other hand, this entire people had the singular quality of being civilized and did not include natives, savages, Orientals, or similar. The difference was later recast as racial: the lower races were not a part of We, the people. 51 The search for a rhetoric of legitimacy that could endow European colonialism with an aura of naturalness tended to be an integral element of imperial domination, regardless of its physical or cultural locale. As a result, the intellectual efforts to explain the otherness of indigenous people revealed a certain degree of similarity, despite palpable disparities in the political values or sociocultural styles of colonizing nations within the European metropolis. 52 In summary, the colonialist relationship is a hierarchy of differential appropriation of natural resources and human labour justified by a world view in which racism plays a central role. This world view, at the heart of which is the belief that men are fundamentally unequal divided by colour, ethnicity or religion does not fade with the transition to the era of post colonialism. Its hierarchic and exclusionary traits will continue to influence the conceptualization of the people, and the effect of this influence on populist movements depends on the position of such movements vis-à-vis the colonial relationship. The coloniality of power grounds the national narratives of who does and does not belong to the people of the metropolitan nation-state The racism and ethnicity that were central to the colonial relationship grounded the power relationships between Europe and the populations of the rest of the world and configured a matrix of conceptions, ideas and practices that continue to influence interpersonal relationships, even after the disappearance of colonial political relations

8 dani filc Latin America s inclusive populism and anti-colonialism The first wave of populism in Latin America, and especially in South America, appeared in the 1930s and 1940s and is associated with names such as Lázaro Cárdenas, Getulio Vargas, Juan Domingo Perón and Jorge Gaitán. Latin American populism emerged in countries on the periphery of capitalism, all of which needed to overcome the entrenched legacies of colonialism (namely, an elite class that used its economic privileges to maintain an exploitative system of commodity exports). 56 Populism in Latin America manifested an anti-elitist approach that was, and still is, mostly inclusive. 57 In its first wave, the emergence of populism was associated with the development of dependent capitalism and the political activation of popular sectors that seek the expansion of closed political systems. 58 First-wave Latin American populist movements were borne out of the mobilization of excluded social groups (internal migrants, new urban workers, peasants and indigenous groups), which accompanied the more frequent and organized appearance of the masses in the public sphere. Urbanization, industrialization, demographic explosion, and technological and social changes in the agrarian world, all played important parts in the rise of Latin American populism, 59 whose inclusivity took place in three dimensions material/redistributive, symbolic and political. Populist leaders adopted economic models that emphasized the role of the state in the economy. The state became a major player through either direct investment or nationalization of foreign-owned companies (e.g. Vargas nationalized the reserves of oil and natural gas, while Perón did the same for the railways, the central bank, and the electric and telephone companies). Economic policies were based on the growth of the public sector, active support of import substitution industrialization and an expansive fiscal policy (that sometimes engendered considerable budget deficits). Populist socio-economic policies led to a partial redistribution of income and wealth that benefited the excluded masses. Some leaders (such as Arbenz in Guatemala and Cárdenas in Mexico) carried out agrarian reforms that favoured impoverished peasants. Others (such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil) implemented measures including, but not limited to, minimum wage, paid vacations and the recognition of trade unions as legitimate partners that benefited the new working class. 60 More recently, third-wave populist leaders attempted redistributive reforms that would eliminate the vestiges of colonialism. 61 Latin American populism uses the concept people to symbolically include the excluded, since in South America, as in the colonial world as a whole, the category people is synonymous with the colonial subaltern. The political agent is the people understood as the damnes (e.g. Fanon s wretched of the earth). 62 In Latin America, the definition of the people is based on the ideology of Americanism, which emerged in connection with the anti-colonialist struggles of the 19th century, stressing that Latin-American identity comprised a mixture of creole, mestizo and indigenous heritages. Such a heterogeneous conceptualization of the identity of Latin American peoples (in clear opposition to European exclusionary nativism) framed the inclusive character of populism in Latin America. 63 The emergence of this identity in the process of anti-colonialist struggles emphasizes the relationship 270

9 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism between its inclusive character and the fact that Latin America was a colonized sub continent. It is true that mestizaje (and Americanism is an expression of mestizaje) has been criticized for being an exclusionary ideology. It has even been defined as an all-inclusive ideology of exclusion 64 that marginalizes blackness and indigenousness. But, as Wade notes, mestizaje does not have a single meaning within the Latin American context, and contains tensions between inclusion and exclusion. 65 Thus, mestizaje is also the constitution of a new subject, a mestizo citizen, that denies colonial forms of racial/ethnic oppression. 66 In this sense, mestizaje can be defined as a liberating force that breaks open colonial and neo-colonial categories of ethnicity and race. 67 Thus, in Latin America, populist discourse blended nationalism and an anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist nativism, the latter of which emphasized pride in the indigenous past and in the indigenous/non-white roots of the true people. Examples include the indigenismo (the defence of the rights of indigenous peoples) of the Peruvian APRA, the Peronist claim that they stood for the cabecitas negras ( small black heads, the derogatory term for working-class internal migrants) and the descamisados (shirtless, another derogatory term applied to workers), and Vargas s allegation that he represented the povo moreno (the black people). This is an inclusive nativism, in which the people are, as expressed by the Peruvian Haya de la Torre, indo-american. In stark contrast to the European colonizer s racist hierarchy, Latin American populism proposed a continent free of racial struggles, in so doing offering humanity the birth of a new race: the mestizo race. 68 An inclusive conception of the we, the mestizo nativism allows the symbolic inclusion of the excluded. Nativist nationalism sets the people against imperialist and colonialist forces and their internal ally the oligarchy. Subordinate and excluded groups have been constituted rhetorically as part of the nation. Insofar as they represented the positive term of the dichotomy, the absolute nature of this opposition contributed to the integration of the excluded groups. The people and the nation were one, and the excluded groups were its core. The oligarchy, imperialism and colonialism are the absolute Other. The people represented authenticity, roots and fairness. The oligarchy represented lack of authenticity, foreignness and injustice; colonialism represented exploitation. Opposition to populist movements is always depicted as allies of colonialism, neo-colonialism or imperialism. 69 Populism was thus, identified with nationalism and cultural pride, which could become xenophobic in hard times. 70 However, xenophobia was usually directed against the imperialist Other (mostly against British and American imperialisms 71 ). Through these symbolic devices, populism provided the excluded masses with an overarching identity. 72 Peronist discourse is an example of the ways in which inclusive South American populism posits the people as including the colonized and as the antonym of the colonialist, who represents the Other, the alien. In her main book, My Message, Evita Peron spoke to (and in the name of) the workers, the women, my country s meek descamisados and all the descamisados of the world, the infinite people. 73 She reaffirmed her love for them, for all the peoples exploited and condemned to 271

10 dani filc death by the imperialisms of the world. 74 Sixty years later, speaking in the UN, Argentina s Peronist president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner attacked British colonialism and recalled that in 1806 and 1807, the British attempted to invade the Rio de la Plata; and were defeated by the people, by the mulatos, the blacks and the creoles; the better-off organized social events with the invader, but the true people throw them [the British] out. 75 For Eva Peron, imperialisms are cause of humanities greatest tragedies, humanity which incarnates itself in the people. Peron represented the alternative, the negation of imperialism, emerging from the encounter of the people with Peron. In a world co-formed by exploiting and exploited nations, a world in which behind every nation submitted to imperialist power we find an enslaved people, exploited women and men, Peron raised the flag of freedom, the flag of justice, 76 using an approach that persists until today. Many years later, Cristina Kirchner stated in her speech when assuming her first mandate that: [we] always believed in our country, in its men and women, in the people and in the nation. Those are words that may sound strange in an age of globalization. [but] in times of globalization the concepts of people and the nation are more relevant than ever before in order to represent the interests of the Argentinians. 77 Peron himself saw the history of Latin America, particularly of Argentina, as the history of its subjection to colonialism either by force (Spanish colonialism) or by economic power (British and American economic colonialisms). 78 Peron claimed that developed countries experienced economic growth for two main reasons: their own technological resources and capital accumulation; and, on the other side, access to the riches and labour of the colonized countries. Thus, he concluded, the progress of the imperialist metropolis has been built on the backs of the workers of the colonized peoples, whether in the East or the West. 79 Likewise, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner claimed there are instruments that the big developed countries use to protect themselves, and on many occasions to harm us, the emergent countries. She added that the rich countries keep colonial enclaves and pillage our resources, our fishing banks and our fossil combustibles while the members of the Security Council, comfortably sitting in their couches, do nothing to stop the pillage. 80 However, in the populist view, the history of Latin America is not only the history of colonial pillage, but also the history of the struggle against colonialism and its local allies. It is the ongoing history of the internal opposition between the local elites, allies of colonialism and imperialism, and the national-popular opposition. In Peron s words today, the same as yesterday, the struggle is between emancipators and colonialists, between nationals and anti-nationals. 81 For Peron the real dilemma facing Argentina was liberation or neocolonialism. In his view, nativism is always anti-colonialist. The foreigner, feared and hated, is the colonialist: violence arrives to us from outside, as a calculated sabotage of our firm decision of emancipating ourselves from any kind of colonialism. Peron presented a mestizo nativism, claiming that the Argentinian people were conformed 272

11 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism by the merging between the European roots and America s original peoples. 82 However, in true populist fashion, Peron argued that this mestizo nativism principally characterizes popular culture. While intellectuals are able to abstractly separate themselves from their historical destiny, the people do not want to renounce their history. The local elites were partners of cultural colonialism, and had an expectant and reverent attitude towards a [European] civilization embodied in alien cultural patterns. 83 Peronism, in contrast, asked Argentinians to be themselves, to assume their native national culture resulting from [the combination of] a European inheritance and a specific Latin American one, and not to always ask for the approval of the European colonizer. 84 The current Argentinian president, when speaking in the Mercosur forum in 2007, attacked those who never believed in the Mercosur those that do not believe in the people s power, in our cultural identity, in our historical belonging. In a speech three years later she proposed her interpretation of Argentinian and Latin-American history as representative of those who love our country, and opposed to the interpretation of those who, without knowing or knowingly, become servile and functional to foreign interests. 85 Peronism s alternative utopia was one in which Argentina would be socially just, free from economic oppression and sovereign 86 ; in a world where all peoples and nations will be equal in their duties and rights, a world without governments or nations exploiting other nations or peoples. 87 Thus, Peronist Argentina will struggle for freedom of all peoples and, in particular, for the end of colonialism in America. 88 Peronism is an example of the way in which the colonial relationships structure populism as inclusive, insofar as collective subjectivity is constituted in opposition to imperializing/ colonizing practices and to their allies among the local elites. 89 In the discourses of populist leaders such as Cardenas, Chavez, Morales or Correa, the inclusionary definition of we the people is intertwined with their anti-colonialism. 90 [R]ace and class are central sources of identification for Chávez with the concept of el pueblo. Chávez repeatedly emphasizes his background as a pardo and as a common man. Chávez is quoted as saying: My Indian roots are from my father s side [ ] He [my father] is mixed Indian and black, which makes me very proud. (B. Cannon, Class race polarization in Venezuela and the electoral success of Hugo Chavez: a break with the past or the song remains the same?, Working Paper 9, Working Papers in International Studies (Centre for International Studies Dublin City University, 2008), p. 19). Correa combines an anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist discourse with an inclusive conception of citizenship, including normalizing migrants citizenship status (Gratius, op. cit., Ref. 27). Walter Mignolo sums it up in claiming that from a theoretical perspective, in Latin America, [T]o theorize the concept of the subaltern and the popular we need to go through the logic of coloniality and the colonial and imperial difference. 91 It should be noted, however, that the inclusive character of Latin American populism and the ways in which inclusion is intertwined with discursive anti-colonialism does not mean that Latin-American populism, and Peronism in particular, 273

12 dani filc were radical movements. In fact, inclusionary policies and discourse were articulated within a multi-class movement, which included conservative leaders (especially among the provincial elites) and radical right nationalists; and policies and government actions aimed at weakening the political left. Exclusionary populism and the colonial conceptualization of the demos Until the 1980s, populism was considered a peripheral phenomenon (19th century US and Russia and 20th century Latin-American and Third World). Despite experiences such as Poujadism, the Italian L Uomo, the Netherlands the Farmers Party, and Denmark and Norway s Progress Parties in the 1970s, social scientists considered populism as a non-european phenomenon. 92 Since the 1980s, however, it has expanded so rapidly that we can claim, in agreement with Albertazzi and McDonnell, that the main area of sustained populist growth and success over the last fifteen years in established democracies has been Western Europe. 93 Populist movements became key political forces in countries such as France and Belgium and became members of governing coalitions in Italy, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Conditions for the emergence of populist movements throughout Europe include social processes such as the crisis of Keynesian Fordism and the transition to a neoliberal globalization model; European integration and the resulting threat to national identities; waves of immigration from Third World countries (mostly former colonies); the dismemberment of the USSR and its satellite countries and the crisis of socialism and communism as ideologies of subordinate social groups; and the demise of mass political parties as main mediators between society and the state. 94 Most populist movements that surfaced in Western Europe since the late 1980s belong to the exclusionary sub-family, 95 which is reflected accordingly in their agendas, their doctrines and their political goals. 96 The Western European brand of exclusionary populism is built around the notion of the people as an organic unit. They define the people from a nativist perspective. As Marco Tarchi asserts in his discussion of Italy s Lega Nord, exclusionary populism is based on a notion of the people as both ethnos and demos. 97 European populism, therefore, sets the true, organic, rooted, and local people against the cosmopolitan, globalizing elites, denouncing the political system s betrayal of ethno-cultural and territorial identities. 98 In its opposition to the foreigner or the newcomer the essential Other the local, autochthonous group crystallizes as a unit. Western European populist movements achieve symbolic internal homogenization through the exclusion of immigrants, non-europeans and/or non-locals (as the Vlaams Belang (VB) and the Lega Nord). 99 By excluding the Other, the autochthonous group is able to safeguard its own threatened identity and status. Nationalism and xenophobia, therefore, are fundamental characteristics of Western European populism. At the local level the populists aggressively defend monoculturalism, 100 and support cultural policies designed to defend our roots and reverse the process of deracination

13 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism For exclusionary populism the people and the nation are one and, as in the case of the FN, the community of language, interest, race, memories and culture where man blossoms. [A man] is attached by its roots and deaths, its past, heredity and heritage. 102 As discussed earlier, the exclusionary conception of the people is strongly related to the colonial experience. The FN exemplifies well how colonial experience and world view influence and structure exclusionary populism. As Flood and Frey show: [T]he process of decolonization and its long-term consequences are central issues for extreme right-wing intellectuals grouped in, or ideologically close to, the Front National (FN). The meanings which these writers ascribe to the age of empire and to the post-imperial period feed into the controversy over non-european immigration into France. 103 For the FN, whose leader, Jean Marie le Pen, was a soldier in Algeria, what they consider to be France s epic colonial past is fundamental to the nation s identity. Their exclusionary conception of the French people as an ethno-culturally homogeneous nation is grounded on France s colonial past and on its present relationship with its former colonies, where most immigrants to France originate. 104 French colonizers developed a racist ideology based on the belief that the French were pure and superior, while the Others, the colonized, were considered inferior and savage. As Dina Sherzer claims [W]hat was of utmost importance in the colonies was to preserve French identity; and life in multiracial settings fostered and exacerbated racial consciousness. 105 For Le Pen and the FN, both France s colonial policy and the FN policy against immigration are grounded in the belief that nations and races are fundamentally unequal. Their immigration policy is based on the need to preserve a pure French identity. As for the latter, Le Pen states France is ruined by the weight of immigration so massive that denaturalizes the very essence of our people and our way of life. As for the former, Le Pen has bluntly claimed that God has created races in their diversity This is true for men as it is for dogs, and he recognized that he believes that races are not equal. 106 From this racist perspective, deeply embedded in the French colonial experience, the formerly colonized continue to be viewed as primitive and inferior, embodied in Le Pen s claim I am convinced that immigrants are the avant-garde of the barbarian assault on the West. The European colonial experience, therefore, remains highly relevant to Western European civilization s perception of itself. 107 As Cooper showed, the racial hierarchy implemented in the former colonies reflected on the conceptualization of the people in the metropolis. 108 The FN conceptualizes its opposition to immigration in a framework drawing from and borne out of colonial ideology. Its nativism is strongly influenced by colonialist racism. Immigration is understood as colonization a rebours ( wrong way colonialism ), which they claim is accepted by the French governments because of a combination of the elite s greed (employers need for cheap labour) and a misguided sense of moral guilt for the colonial past. 109 In Le Pen s view, this guilt 275

14 dani filc paralyzes the left and moderately right governments and threatens French security: successive governments are unable to curb crime since doing so means applying strong measures that will be suspected of being racist. This inhibition results from the blaming and guilt for events that happened 70 years ago. 110 The FN even considers a programme of continued French presence in its few remaining overseas colonies to be part of an overall strategy for promoting France s national revival. 111 The perceived deleterious effect of immigration is also related to the colonial experience and the racist world view it generates. For example, in an article entitled Pour Alger et Konakry, descendez a Barbes-Rochechouart published in the FN journal National Hebdo, the writer notes: we could believe we are in the middle of the Maghreb, were not for the Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre, emerging in the middle of a black and Arab Paris, in order to remind the stroller that he is not the victim of a hallucination. 112 The colonial experience is a central element in the development of an exclusionary conceptualization of the people as one nation, one culture, one civilization, one land and one people, united in and by history. In contrast to the mestizo nativism of Latin American populism discussed earlier, the FN sees the ideology of metissage as a threat to all its beliefs and even more important a threat to French security. 113 While the FN is only one of many radical right populist movements in Western Europe, it exemplifies the ways in which the colonial past and the colonial world view strongly influence the exclusionary character of its populism. However, it is not the only case. The exclusionary ideology of the VB is related to their defence of the Flemish colonial past. Researchers have traced a direct line between the way in which Belgian colonizers treated blacks in the Belgian Congo and the treatment of immigrants and coloured minorities in today s post-colonial Belgium. 114 Gomez- Reino 115 shows how the racism of the VB and the Lega Nord can be explained in relation to the colonial legacy of racist hierarchies. Zambenedetti 116 argues that the Lega Nord links its ideology to Italy s imperial past as a colonial power. In the Netherlands, the exclusionary populist politician Verdonk revindicates the Dutch colonial past and attacks those who support the erection of a number of national slavery memorials; Abou el Fadl also compares the exclusionary populism of Geert Wilders with the racist ideology that grounded Dutch colonialism. In his comparison between Dutch and French exclusionary populism, Peteves 117 stresses their shared colonial experience. 118 Keskinen et al. 119 show how the colonial experience influences xenophobia and exclusionary practices and ideology, even in the Scandinavian countries that were not directly involved in colonial relations of power. The exclusionary conception of the demos is a characteristic common to European right populist parties, 120 an exclusionary character related to the fact that when former colonial subjects migrated to their former metropolis, they rekindled forms of exclusion and racism [and set off] political pressures for the narrowing 276

15 latin american inclusive and european exclusionary populism of citizenship Coloniality tended to essentialize difference, thus, contributing to the emergence of hierarchical and racially defined models of the polis in the metropolis. 123 As Gorse argues, the legal counterpart of the attempts to reformulate the relationship between race and space was the concept of racialized citizenship that emerged from the colonial context. 124 Conclusions Including the perspectives of colonialism and coloniality in the analysis of populism helps elucidate and define the differences between the Latin American and Western European versions of the ideology. How given expressions of populism define the pure people and the corrupt elite determines whether the movement is inclusive or exclusionary. Latin American populism is characterized by a mestizo, anti-colonialist, nativism ( americanismo ). As discussed in relation to the term mestizaje, for Latin American populist movements, the people is always constituted by the [partial] inclusion of different ethnic and social groups. The elites, insofar as they are heirs to the colonial apparatus, and their colonialist/imperialist allies, are the ones who are considered newcomers or aliens, while the excluded groups are the autochthonous ones. 125 This need to deconstruct colonialist ideology increases the likelihood that the plebeian meaning of the signifier people will receive greater emphasis. In contrast, Western European populism despite advancing the pleas of social groups that are on the losing end of neoliberal globalizing processes is exclusionary because its nativism is that of the colonizer. The ethnocentrism that stemmed from and legitimized colonialism constituted the demos as restricted to the colonizers. Especially in Western Europe, populism emerges as a consequence of processes triggered by decolonization. Exclusionary populism reproduces an ethnocentrism characteristic of colonialism. 126 Indeed, anti-immigration sentiments are among the strongest fuels for the development of Western European radical right populism. The alien is the colonized in the past denied the benefits of citizenship and excluded from the demos in the colonies, today they are denied belonging in the metropolis. Many of the immigrants targeted by the exclusionary populist movements of European countries come from the former colonies of those countries. Contrary to the outcome in Latin America, in Europe the colonialist frame of mind will likely emphasize the notion of the people as an ethno-cultural unit. The relative positions of Europe and Latin America within the colonial relationship (as colonizer and colonized) influence how the different groups designated by the signifier people are articulated, facilitating the emergence of, respectively, exclusionary and inclusive forms of populism. In the European case, the indigenous people is invariably defined as those people who share the dominant, i.e. Western and largely European values and culture. 127 As John Taylor argues, the superiority complex of European colonialists was not limited to a single country: It rested in the social fabric of Europe To the contrary, in the Latin American 277

16 dani filc case, the indigenous is always a mix of Native Americans, mestizo, creole and black, a mix that is inherently inclusive. While Peronism and the FN are clear examples of the way in which the colonial relationship differently shapes the type of populism, they are not sui generis cases. Aprismo, Cardenismo or Chavismo are yet other examples of populist movements inclusive at the symbolic, material and political levels. Lega Nord, VB or the True Finns movement are examples of the ways in which the European colonial experience contributes to the development of exclusionary forms of populism. 130 Past colonial history, that is the position of each society vis-à-vis the colonial relationship, does not explain by itself the emergence of populist movements. Populism emerges as the complex interaction between the structure of specific societies, the characteristics of the political system and the emergence of struggles on the inclusion/exclusion of certain social groups. Thus, in the UK, an exclusionary populist party as UKIP has gained force only lately; in Spain, a former colonial power, there are no significant populist movements, and we also see the emergence of what could be considered as left-wing populism. 131 Yet the earlier analysis shows that colonial history does play an important role in understanding why Latin American populism is mostly inclusive, while its Western European counterpart is mostly exclusionary. Moreover, the colonial perspective could guide further research, asking whether the emergence of allegedly left populist movements as Podemos and Syriza are at least partially a response to the colonial overtones in the relation between the Euro-periphery and Germany. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my colleagues Dr Lynn Schler and Prof Yehuda Shenhav and two anonymous readers for their insightful comments. The limitations of the paper are my own. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Notes 1. C. Mudde and C. Rovira-Kaltwasser, Voices of the peoples: populism in Europe and Latin America compared, Kellogg Institute Working Paper No. 378 (Notre Dame, IN: Kellogg Institute, Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. J.M. Le Pen, 2010, available at (accessed January 2013). 5. M. Canovan, Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy, Political Studies, 47 (1999), pp See, among the rich literature on populism, M. Canovan, Populism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981); G. Ionescu and E. Gellner, Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics (London: Macmillan, 1969); E. Laclau, Politica e Ideologia en la Teoria Marxista: Capitalismo, Fascismo, Populismo (Mexico, 278