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Photo: “ĽSNS Rally 2019“, by Ec1801011 licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Hue modified from the original

Buzalka, Juraj. “Village Fascists and Progressive Populists: Two Faces of the Countermovement in Slovakia.” Europe-Asia Studies 73, no. 9 (October 8, 2021): 1658–82.

Abstract

The introduction of liberal reforms in Slovakia has generated countermovements that build upon nostalgia for state socialism. This essay shows how countermovement emotions can be successfully employed by both reactionary and liberal leaders, provided that they accurately respond to voters’ concerns by mitigating the economic ideology of the free market and reflecting voters’ preferred ways of life. It argues that recent protest movements, whether reactionary or progressive, derive their impetus from the resilient agrarian features of state-socialist modernity. They must therefore be analysed in terms of a historical cultural economy that predates the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

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The Illiberalism Studies Program studies the different faces of illiberal politics and thought in today’s world, taking into account the diversity of their cultural context, their intellectual genealogy, the sociology of their popular support, and their implications on the international scene.

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