Lars Rensmann

Populismus und ideologie

In der europaischen politischen Landschaft ist der Begriff des Populismus weithin negativ konnotiert. Dies liegt nicht zuletzt an den spezifischen katastrophalen Erfahrungen mit demagogischen Mobilisierungen eines „Volkswillens“ durch charismatische Fuhrungspersonlichkeiten, auf die „Populismus“ in Europa heute noch landlaufig verweist. In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland haben die Verfassungsvater auch vor dem Hintergrund der totalitaren Potenziale plebiszitarer Massenpolitik, mit denen Populismus ferner assoziiert wird, ganz auf Verfahren vermittelnder demokratischer Reprasentation gesetzt und auf die Institutionalisierung direktdemokratischer Mechanismen politischer Entscheidungsfindung verzichtet. Der Vorwurf, „populistisch“ zu agieren, wird heute zumeist dann in Stellung gebracht, wenn dem politischen Gegner unterstellt wird, er polarisiere und simplifiziere bei komplexen Sachverhalten, um opportunistisch einer augenblicklich wahrgenommenen Stimmung oder Mehrheitsmeinung zu entsprechen und aus dieser skrupellos politisch Kapital zu schlagen. Aus den politischen und offentlichen Debatten der Gegenwart ist jener Vorwurf kaum mehr wegzudenken. Der Populismus-Vorwurf gerat hierbei selbst zunehmend in den Verdacht, populistisch zu sein (Decker 2000: 23 f.). Insofern ist „Populismus“ heute zuvorderst ein schillerndes Schlagwort, mithin ein politischer Kampfbegriff.

Europeanism and Americanism in the Age of Globalization Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Europe and America and Implications for a Post-National Identity of the EU Polity

The article examines Hannah Arendt’s analysis of ‘pan-nationalist Europeanism’ and anti-Americanism which may serve inherently problematic identity-generating functions for the European project. For Arendt, this specific form of Europeanism is often intimately linked to mobilizations of widely spread fears of global sociocultural and economic modernization, which is frequently perceived as ‘Americanization’. In addition, however, those fears may reflect self-referential politics of ‘Americanism’ abroad and also originate in ‘objective’ structural international imbalances. According to Arendt, then, Americanism on one side and Europeanism on the other side of the Atlantic should be challenged as two ideologies facing, fighting and, above all, resembling each other as all seemingly opposed ideologies. In light of the current transatlantic cleavages, it is argued with Arendt that it is in the EU’s best interest to avoid binary, culturalized legitimizations of Europeanism and (anti-)Americanism. Instead, it is the eminent political task to positively resignify the EU as a new, truly post-national project and polity in its own right. Adapting and expanding Arendt’s framework, conceptual and normative implications for a self-reflexive, unique and future-oriented EU political identity and response to globalization are indicated and discussed.

The New Politics of Prejudice: Comparative Perspectives on Extreme Right Parties in European Democracies

The resurgence of extreme right parties gained its first sudden and dramatic momentum when the Front National (FN), led by Jean Marie LePen, scored 11.2 percent in the 1984 European elections. This took many by surprise, including political and social scientists, most of whom at the time had expected rightist extremism to dissi pate altogether. Indeed, until the mid-1980s, the organized extreme right remained completely marginalized in Europe, enjoyed little political support, and performed poorly in elections, with the noted exception of the sustained, albeit small-scale presence of the neofas cist Movimento Sociale Italiana (MSI), which was mostly viewed as just another peculiarity of postwar Italian politics. Even more surpris ingly, however, LePens breakthrough reflected not just a single inci dent but rather a more general watershed: a lasting upsurge of the extreme right all over Europe that reached its first peak with some dramatic electoral gains in the early 1990s, accompanied by a wave of anti-immigrant violence. Since then, several political parties have

Adorno and the Global Public Sphere: Rethinking Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Condition of Politics

In contemporary sociology and political theory, the “global public sphere” mostly refers to an emerging horizontal globalization of public spaces, political agents, and normative discourses evolving toward a “global civil society” (Kaldor 2003). Engendered by new information technology and global media, the “global public sphere” is assumed to constitute a democratic corrective facing international institutions and global politics, while promoting critical universality and universalistic norms and rights claims. In its nascent stage, it already serves, it is argued, critical functions of publicity and critique in a “partially globalized world” (Keohane 2001). Even though it is still considered weak when compared to national democratic publics, several cosmopolitan theorists also attribute to the multifaceted “global public sphere” a key role legitimizing the “constitutionalization of international law” (Habermas 2006; Archibugi 2008; Marchetti 2012). Others emphasize the potential progressive impact of the global public on “domestic” politics, enabling and supporting cosmopolitan norms and democratic agents in local conflicts within nation-states.

Reading Arendt in Tehran: on extraordinary democratic politics and the failure of revolutions

This article seeks to understand the 2009 Iranian anti-government uprising through an Arendtian lens, and re-read Arendts conceptions of power, civil disobedience and revolution in the light of this event. Generating non-institutionalized, non-regularized public spaces both within and beyond the limits of the established order, diverse communities reconstituted an Iranian multitude that temporarily shifted the power from the regime to the street. Arendt helps us understand both how this self-authorized and self-empowered multitude was able to recover democratic subjectivity and power under non-democratic conditions, and how the democratic uprising failed and the regime could crush it and consolidate its rule.

Political Terror in the Age of Global Modernity: Adorno's Critical Theory of Totalitarianism Revisited

This article explores Adornos critical theory of totalitarianism in the age of global modernity. According to his model, modern totalitarian ideologies, regimes and movements are distinct in their ‘ruthless arbitrariness’. They aim at exterminating ‘others’ and, ultimately, at eradicating the very idea of freedom by means of unbound terror. Totalitarianism cannot be adequately explained by or reduced to issues of culture and religion. In particular, totalitarian movements can be traced back to tensions of global modern society that reach beyond the scope of nationally circumscribed law and politics. However, while totalitarianism is no direct expression of global modernity, from Adornos perspective it also cannot be understood merely as an anti-modern rebellion. The global logic of modernisation emboldens transnational emancipatory claims and democratic constitutionalism but also institutes a hegemonic ‘instrumental rationality’. Its inherent socioeconomic domination mechanism tends to render citizens superfluous, facilitating new forms of (global) dependence that know no boundaries, and enabling new modern authoritarianisms that can increase social susceptibilities to totalitarian movements and terror. Past and present ‘totalitarianisms’ need therefore be understood as apocalyptic political forces with little interest in economic and political bargaining but also be situated in the persistent context of global modernitys self-generated crises and failures; modernitys Other they are not.

National Sovereigntism and Global Constitutionalism: An Adornian Cosmopolitan Critique

There are two dominant schools of thought addressing problems of cosmopolitanism and (international) conflict: democratic national sovereigntism, inspired by Hegel, and global constitutionalism, inspired by Kant and reformulated by Habermas. This paper develops a third position by reading Adornos critique of both theoretical traditions. Rather than compromising between these camps, Adorno triangulates between them. Critically illuminating their respective deficiencies in view of the changing conditions of a globalized modern world has critical implications for cosmopolitics. Although largely negative, Adornos critique provides an important framework for a contestatory reformulation of cosmopolitanism, one that is better equipped to confront societal and political global conflicts insufficiently reflected in sovereigntist and global constitutionalist models.

Sports, Global Politics, and Social Value Change: A Research Agenda

Despite their important role in forging, constructing and self-ascribing social identities and shaping popular culture, sports have long been a marginalized subject of social science inquiry, cultural studies, and research on international politics. Only in recent years this has begun to change. The article seeks to advance the still nascent but emerging cross-disciplinary field of research on sports and global politics in two ways: first, by addressing largely unexplored issues of sports, politics, and social conflicts, putting the spotlight on sociopolitical arenas beyond commercialized sports mega events, which have attracted most scholarly attention in contemporary research; and second, by generating hypotheses on the indirect political effects of sports cultures, in particular on the relationship between local social identities—reinforced through sports—and cosmopolitan value change. These interlinked spatial and substantive claims ground a new critical research framework and agenda: it examines sports as profoundly embedded in socioeconomic, cultural and political forms of rule and domination but also seeks to disclose sports’ emancipatory and subversive potential in advancing globalization from below.

The Politics of Paranoia: How—and Why—the European Radical Right Mobilizes Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Counter-Cosmopolitanism

Looking at contemporary radical right ideology and its political context, this chapter challenges the aforementioned propositions. It claims that, while racialized hostility against Muslims plays an important role in many radical right mobilizations alongside general anti-immigrant resentment, antisemitism remains an integral element of new radical right ideology. The chapter summarizes the findings of several qualitative content analyses of radical right party manifestos and public campaigns in order to establish the constitutive features of the European radical rights contemporary ideology. It then examines the demand side, the general political context, and favorable conditions for radical right mobilizations of resentment, focusing in particular on the neglected resurgence of political antisemitism and its origins and causal mechanisms. The chapter examines a country where the radical right has been successful electorally: Hungary. The radical rights resurgent and reloaded politics of paranoia in Europe find a special target in Jews and Zionists. Keywords: antisemitism; causal mechanisms; Europe; Hungary; Jews; muslims; paranoia; radical right party manifestos; Zionists

Politics and Resentment: Examining Antisemitism and Counter-Cosmopolitanism in the European Union and Beyond

In the course of history, antisemitism has been an integral part of European modernity. It certainly marked the #034;short twentieth century,#034; an #034;age of extremes#034;. While the revival of extreme right parties has received broad attention by political science research, turning the radical right into arguably the best studied European party family, the diagnosed recent rise of antisemitism within and beyond the confines of extreme right mobilizations has so far hardly come under scholarly scrutiny. According to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), #034;antisemitism#034; is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. This chapter suggests that there is a set of four specific conditions that are favorable for—and indeed predict—the overall rise, public display, and political mobilization of counter-cosmopolitanism and modernized antisemitism in contemporary Europe. Keywords:Antisemitism; Counter-Cosmopolitanism; EUMC; European; Jews; twentieth century