THE NEW RADICAL RIGHT POLITICAL PARTIES IN CENTRAL, EASTERN AND SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

DANGER TO THE DEMOCRACY OR JUST AN ILLIBERAL DÉCOR?

Abstract

The political parties of the new radical right have been a major and constant
threat for the liberal values and flows in the Western democracies. Almost the entire
second part of the XX century has been filled with raises and falls of the new radical
right parties in the countries of the first and second wave of democratization. Today,
the new radical right parties are strongly reemerging in the Western Europe. What can
be easily noticed is the fact that in the last few years the virus called new radical right
slowly but certainly has started to occupy also the countries in Central, Eastern and
Southeastern Europe. Although the new radical right parties in this part of Europe are
still far behind the successes of the new radical right parties in Western Europe, the
emergence and success of JOBBIK in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, ATAKA in
Bulgaria, SLOBODA in Ukraine etc. represents phenomena which should be followed
very closely and carefully. These parties share the ideological background of the new
radical right parties in Western Europe (anti-establishment position, anti-immigrant
position, anti-globalization position, Euroscepticism, nationalism, dogmatism,
rigidity, exclusivity, authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism) but they also have
some ideological specifics which are strictly connected to them and not to the new
radical right parties coming from Western Europe. The main subject of this paper will
be the values and the reasons for the (un)success of the new radical right political
parties in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. This paper attempts to prove that
although the new radical right parties in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe do
not have power and success like the new radical right parties in Western democracies,
they still represent great danger to the new democracies in Europe, because they are
introducing radical rhetoric in the political discourse and contribute for the
radicalization of the mainstream right-wing political parties.