(Il)liberalism and Populism in the Visegrád Four: Toward a Discourse and Hegemony Analysis

This paper draws on the discourse and hegemony theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as well as the discourse analysis of the so-called Essex School to examine the relationship between (il)liberal and populist logics in current populist discourses in the Visegrád countries. Populism is understood (following Laclau’s theory) as the construction of an antagonistic frontier between a popular subject and a locus of power; populist discourses in government, then, require the construction of deeper, hidden, or external loci of power, such as in Andrej Babiš’s suggestion that “mafia”-like power structures are at work (e.g. in the Čapí hnízdo affair) or Viktor Orbán’s targeting of the EU and, increasingly, the figure of George Soros as external threats to the sovereignty of the people. Populist discourses thus take on illiberal or anti-liberal inflections in the form of the more or less explicitly illiberal state projects in Hungary and Poland, but also in the case of Tomio Okamura’s “Freedom and Direct Democracy,” which deploys the ostensibly liberal nodal point “freedom” to denounce Islam as a “totalitarian ideology” and to call into question basic rights for certain minorities (a pattern also visible in the discourse of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom). At the same time, key differences emerge between the illiberalism of Fidesz and PiS – which is tied to a generalized critique of the post-1989 transition as well as the promise to “transform the transformation” (Minkenberg) – and the Czech cases of ANO, SPD, and Public Affairs (VV), all of which feature “(hard) work” as a key signifier constructed in opposition to the likes of “politicians,” “parties,” “parasites,” and “unadaptables” (nepřizpůsobiví) and thereby radicalize key elements of neo-liberal transformation discourses that emphasize the value of work, entrepreneurship, and self-initiative. The goal of this discourse and hegemony analysis is to reconstruct this diversity of (il)liberalism-populism linkages and constructions of “the people” in populist discourses in the V4 region as well as to reflect on the implications for attempts at counter-hegemonic displacement or dislocation (e.g. Momentum in Hungary, Committee for the Defense of Democracy in Poland).