National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Pelican Books) by Roger Eatwell & Matthew Goodwin

Author:Roger Eatwell & Matthew Goodwin [Eatwell, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780241312018
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.4 Percentage of population who believe that language, customs and ancestry are important.

Figure 4.5 Percentage of population who believe that:

That national populism is not simply a refuge for diehard racists has been shown by others. For instance, of the people who were drawn to Nigel Farage in Britain, only one in five thought that blacks were less intelligent than whites (a classic measure of racism), but nearly two-thirds saw Islam as a danger to the West.25 After looking at what motivated national-populist support across six democracies in Europe, the scholar Jens Rydgren has similarly demonstrated how these voters’ main concern was not to express an irrational hatred or fear of ‘the other’ but rather to voice their scepticism of immigration, their desire to reduce the levels of immigration and slow the pace of change. Questions that tapped blatant racism, such as whether or not people opposed having an immigrant as their boss or one of their relatives marrying an immigrant, were less revealing than those that asked whether people simply wanted fewer immigrants in the nation, but not necessarily because they were racist.26

Such findings underline the problems and risks that come with branding all national-populist supporters as ‘racist’, let alone ‘fascist’. Consider one example of how this can backfire. Ahead of European Parliament elections in 2014, British politicians and journalists charged UKIP with racism after the party released billboards suggesting that low-skilled immigrants were undermining employment opportunities for domestic British workers. The attack went down well among graduates, middle-class liberals and ethnic minorities, few of whom supported UKIP. But it further alienated workers and social conservatives who shared legitimate worries about the effects of historically unprecedented rates of immigration. It also ran the risk of alienating the much larger 70 per cent of all people in Britain who shared the belief that low-skilled workers looking for low-paid work should not be allowed in Britain. Playing the racism card reinforced a sense that an established elite had little time for people who thought differently about these issues. When all the votes had been counted, UKIP became the first party other than the mainstream Conservatives and Labour to top the poll in a nationwide election since 1906, albeit with under 27 per cent of the vote.

Wanting a tighter immigration policy or fewer immigrants is not in itself racist. Rather than being driven by racial hatred, most national populists see the quest for lower immigration and slower ethnic change as an attempt to stem the dwindling size of their group, to advance its interests and (in their eyes) avoid the destruction of their culture and identity.

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