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The anti-woke smear campaign does not merely legitimize a nationalist agenda, it injects far-right talking points into the mainstream

The anti-woke smear campaign does not merely legitimize a nationalist agenda, it injects far-right talking points into the mainstream

anemon In recent years, extremist right parties have been on the agenda of European politics. the increasing tendency of Europeans to the extreme right parties is both thought-provoking and worrisome. Breivik’s attack gives important clues to the way in which the racist and extremeright discourses have had an impact on European society. The multicultural structure of Europe, which has diverse ethnic, religious and cultural groups, has beenendangered by the xenophobia of extremist right parties and its discourse basedon Islamic and Muslim hostility. The Belgian Vlaams Belang party, which has been loyal to extreme right thought, has entered intothe attitudes of cultural racism against Muslims living in Belgium with their discourses and activities. According to Vlaams Belang, who defines Islam as a terrorist supporter, sexist and barbaric, the muslims'presencesare a threat to European and Belgian society. Yükselişe geçen aşırısağ partiler son yıllarda Avrupa siyaset gündemini oluşturmaktadırlar. Avrupatoplumunun aşırı sağ partilere artan eğilimi hem düşündürücü hem de kaygıverici olarak değerlendirilmektedir. Breivik saldırısı, ırkçı ve aşırı sağsöylemlerin Avrupa toplumun nasıl bir etki yarattığını anlamada önemli ipuçlarıvermektedir. Farklı etnik, dini vekültürel grupları barındıran Avrupa’nın çok kültürel yapısı, aşırı sağpartilerin yabancı düşmanlığı ve de özellikle İslam ve Müslüman düşmanlığınadayalı söylemleri sayesinde tehlikeye girmiştir. Aşırı sağ geleneğe sadık kalanBelçika Vlaams Belang Partisi de, söylemleri ve faaliyetleri ile Belçika’dayaşayan Müslümanlara karşı kültürel ırkçılığın izlerini taşıyan tutumlariçerisine girmiştir. İslam’ı terör yanlısı, cinsiyetçi ve barbar olarakniteleyen Vlaams Belang'a göre Müslümanların varlıkları Avrupa ve Belçikatoplumu için bir tehdittir. 453752

International audience; Dieser Beitrag analysiert das Bild der abrahamitischen Religionen in den Präsidentschaftswahlprogrammen des Front National (2012 und 2017) im Vergleich zu anderen erfolgreichen rechtsextremen populistischen Parteien in EU-Ländern Nord- und Westeuropas. Die Analyse zeigt einerseits eine gemeinsame Tendenz, den Islam negativ darzustellen, andereseits auch Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Parteien in bezug auf die Darstellung des Judemtums und/oder Israel sowie der Bedeutung, die dem Christentum für die nationale oder europäische Identität zugemessen wird, die jeweils interessante Parallelen zu den nationalen diskursiven Traditionen und der Geschichte der jeweiligen Partei aufweisen.; This article analyses the image of the three abrahamic religions in the recent political programs of the French Front National (2012 und 2017) in a comparative perspective with other successful populist radical right-wing parties in EU-Countries of continental Western and Northern Europe. It will be shown that even if there is a common tendency of representing Islam negatively and avoiding overt antisemitism, there are differences with regard to Judaism and/or Israel as well as to the weight of Christianity for the national and/or European culture, which have interesting parallels with the national discourse traditions and the particular radical right-wing history of these parties.; Cet article analyse l’image des trois religions abrahamites dans les programmes politiques récents du Front National en la comparant avec celle créée par d’autres partis d’extrême droite populiste de pays de l’Union Européenne appartenant à l’Europe occidentale continentale et à la Scandinavie qui ont été couronnés d’un certain succès lors des élections récentes. Il sera montré que, même si l’on peut constater une convergence quant à l’image négative créée de l’islam ainsi que dans la tendance d’éviter un antisémitisme ouvert, il y a, toutefois, des différences en ce qui concerne le judaïsme et/ou Israël et le poids attribué au christianisme dans la culture nationale et/ou européenne. On y peut observer des parallèles intéressants avec les traditions discursives nationales ainsi que l’histoire de ces partis d’extrême droite.

This article presents a discourse-theoretical analysis of the discursive struggle against the Flemish radical right from within Flemish nationalist civil society as it was fought out in debates about the Flemish National Songfest in the period 1991-1995. Using a discourse-theoretical redefinition of nationalism, the article develops the argument that the discursive struggle against the radical right from within Flemish nationalist civil society has been structured around attenuations of nationalism. Whilst the radical right takes the nationalist premise of the existence of a sovereign and limited nation to its radical conclusions, opposition to the radical right contests the authoritarian and racist consequences of radical nationalism. The radical right's critics attenuate Flemish nationalism's radical potential by articulating it with signifiers originating in other discourses: democracy, tolerance, peace, and openness. But they do not question the nationalist premises in which the radical right's authoritarianism and racism are grounded. By analyzing these mechanisms, the article contributes to understanding the discursive struggle among Flemish nationalists, and especially the tensions inherent to the resistance against radical right politics from the part of more moderate nationalists.

This bachelor thesis is focused on separatist parties in Canada and Belgium, specifically Vlaams Belang and Parti Québécois. The comparison of those parties is based on their history, structure, success in elections, programme and position in the political system of their regions and countries. Trough the comparison the thesis shows that those two parties are similar only in their language focused separatism.

One of the main currents in Chantal Mouffe's work has been the development of a post-Marxist and post-structuralist discourse theory, a conceptual framework for analyzing politics as discursive struggle. Another, closely related current in her work has been the theorization of the notions of democracy, politics and the political and the formulation of a project for what a democratic politics should look like. Looking at contemporary politics, it becomes clear that the signifier 'democracy' has itself often been a major element in the discursive struggles between competing political projects. In this talk, I will bring these two currents of Chantal Mouffe's work together to scrutinize the role played by the signifier 'democracy' in the politics of and against the contemporary populist radical right. Both critics of the populist radical right and the populist radical right itself have structured their rhetoric around the notion of democracy, a fact that is allowed by the inherent ambiguities of the notion of (liberal) democracy. Using examples from the history of the Flemish populist radical right Vlaams Blok/Belang and the opposition against it, I will show how the VB, as a populist party, has skillfully claimed the signifier 'democracy' by exploiting one dimension of democratic thought. Its opponents have had major issues in dealing with this strategy. Their rhetoric has tended to revolve around an anti-populism that often does not manage to deal with the complexities of democracy and has in some cases led to a rather elitist perspective on democracy that denies the legitimacy of democracy's popular dimension and of voices outside of the dominant consensus. The relevance of this discussion goes beyond the radical right. It also shows, I believe, how Chantal Mouffe's work might help us to understand, and problematize, the current rhetoric of but also the rhetoric against populist and Eurosceptic parties, whether situated at the radical right or elsewhere on the political spectrum.

The relations of the Flemish populist radical right party Vlaams Blok/Belang (VB) with mainstream expressive culture have been weak and antagonistic. Through its relations to the 'Flemish Movement', a network of Flemish nationalist civil society organisations, the party does have connections to the expressive culture of this Flemish nationalist subculture. This article zooms in on one of the main cultural-political Flemish Movement events, the Flemish National Songfest. VB politicians and militants as well as associations close to the VB are an important presence at this Songfest. As an event where Flemish nationalists meet, the Songfest has repeatedly been the object of struggle between different Flemish nationalist factions with different views on Flemish nationalism and on the role of the Songfest. This paper presents a discourse-theoretical analysis of the struggle between the VB and more moderate Flemish nationalists as it was fought out around the Songfest in the period between the party's foundation (1977) and its electoral peak (2006). It shows how the VB's rhetoric is built around a radical and uncompromising nationalism that sees the Flemish Movement as the radical vanguard of the Flemish people and that treats political compromise as treason. To the VB, the Songfest needs to be a militant nationalist meeting and attempts to widen the appeal of the Songfest beyond the radical nationalist subculture are rejected as treason of the 'vocation' of the Songfest.

I will present the results of my doctoral thesis on the rhetoric of the Flemish populist radical right party Vlaams Blok/Belang (VB). Empirical material for the talk is drawn from case studies of three moments of particularly fierce discursive struggle between the VB and its opponents: (1) the 0110 concerts for tolerance, a very large scale mobilisation against the VB, (2) the struggle between the VB and its opponents within the nationalist Flemish Movement for an annual nationalist singing festival, and (3) the struggle between the VB and the Flemish city theatres. I will discuss how the VB has used four main components - nationalism, populism, conservatism, and authoritarianism - in its rhetoric, applying these components together in a relatively stable but flexible, evolving, and sometimes contradictory manner. Throughout, I will pay particular attention to how the history of Flemish nationalism (and especially WWII collaboration) has often become articulated in the discursivestruggle between the VB and its opponents.

The paper presents an analysis of the discursive struggle for the Flemish National Songfest between the Flemish populist radical right party Vlaams Blok/Belang and its opponents within the Flemish Movement in the period 1991-1995. The main focus is on how the VB's rhetoric is structured around a radical nationalism, whereas the VB's opponents' rhetoric is structured around the attenuation of nationalism's exclusive and authoritarian potentials.

Populism is a discourse that is built around the antagonism between the powerless ('the people') and the powerful ('the elite') and that claims to speak for 'the people' whose identity is constructed by opposing it to 'the elite' (Laclau 2005; Mudde 2007). The concept of populism is most commonly used in the context of party politics to label a strategy that consists of criticising the political elite as disconnected from 'the people' whilst claiming to be 'the party of the people' (e.g. Canovan 2008; Ionesco & Gellner 1969; Laclau 2005). However, populism goes beyond party politics: it is used to delegitimize not only competing political parties, but any kind of political opponent. This paper looks at the populism of the Flemish populist radical right party Vlaams Belang (VB) to exemplify this argument. The paper argues that, while fierce criticism of the 'traditional' political parties as 'elite' is indeed one of the core elements of the VB's rhetoric, the VB also uses populism to delegitimize non-party political voices critical of the party as part of one homogeneous and illegitimate 'elite' that is disconnected from the people. The paper presents a discourse-theoretical analysis (Carpentier & De Cleen 2007) of the VB's populism in the discursive struggle between the VB and anti-VB voices in the cultural field. It looks at two cases during the period 2005-2006: the struggle between the VB and the so-called Flemish city theatres and the struggle between the VB and a series of anti-VB/anti-racist concerts, the '0110 concerts for tolerance, against racism, extremism, and gratuitous violence'. The analysis is based on the VB's external communication (website and party magazines), newspaper and magazine articles, and parliamentary interventions. The paper shows that populism is central to the VB's efforts to delegitimize criticism from both high culture artists and popular artists and reveals the flexibility of the VB's populism. The VB's populist strategy is more easily applied to the theatre than to the 0110 concerts. The culture produced by the theatres is easily dismissed as elitist and as connected to the political elite through subsidies. The 0110 concerts however, revolve around popular culture, with artists playing a wide range of music genres, from rock music to (the very lowbrow) schlager music, and are not connected to political parties. To protect its claim on 'the people', the party first attempts to disconnect the lowbrow artists involved in the 0110 concerts from the anti-VB message of the concerts. However, when that does not work, the party does turn to the strategy of labelling these lowbrow artists as elite. Populism is used by the VB as a strategy to present itself as the 'party of the people' and to lump together all voices critical of the VB, whatever their connections to the traditional political 'elite' and whatever their position in the cultural hierarchy, in one homogeneous 'elite' that is disconnected from 'the people'. To be opposed to the 'party of the people' is enough to be discredited as part of the illegitimate 'elite'.

'Security' is a major theme of the rhetoric of the populist radical right in Flanders, the Dutch speaking North of Belgium and arguably played a role in its success. This article analysis the VB's rhetoric on security and how this ties in to its broader nationalist, conservative, populist and authoritarian rhetoric.

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Since the early 1990's the Vlaams Blok (founded in 1978, renamed Vlaams Belang in 2004) has been one of the crucial factors in Flemish and Belgian politics and one of the most successful populist radical right parties in Europe, although its heydays seem to have been from the early 1990's until the mid 2000's. This chapter discusses the rhetoric of the VB by looking at the struggle between the VB and the so-called Flemish city theatres. The Flemish city theatres in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels are the three largest Dutch-speaking theatres in Belgium, funded by the Flemish Community. The city theatres have been among the most active opponents of the VB from within the cultural sector and have been the cultural institutions most consistently criticised by the VB. The chapter presents a discourse theoretical analysis (Carpentier & De Cleen 2007) of the rhetoric of the VB about the city theatres in the period 2005-2006, a period of heightened struggle between the VB and the theatre world. The analysis is based on a corpus of external communication of the VB and the city theatres, parliamentary and city council debates about the city theatres, as well as mainstream media and specialised media coverage. The chapter shows how the VB's criticism of the city theatres has been structured around the articulation of three discourses - nationalism, conservatism, and populism - which mutually reinforce each other and have served to create a strong antagonism between the VB and the city theatres.

Ever since the Flemish radical right party Vlaams Blok's (later Vlaams Belang, VB) massive electoral breakthrough in 1991, artists have been at the forefront of the resistance against the party. The VB itself has not been particularly prolific in its discourse about culture, but when it did speak it often caused strong reactions. This paper presents a discourse-theoretical analysis of two cases when the VB and artists clashed. A first case study deals with the 2006 "0110 concerts for tolerance and against racism, extremism and gratuitous violence". A second case study focuses on the VB's criticism of the city theatres' un-Flemish, decadent and elitist programme. Through a discourse-theoretical (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, Laclau 2005) reading of the literature about the populist radical right, three central concepts - people, elite, and nation - are identified that are crucial to the VB's nativist, populist, and authoritarian-conservative discourse (Mudde 2007). The paper analyses which definitions of people, elite, nation the VB constructs in its discourse about culture, and how artists contest, redefine and reproduce these definitions. The paper shows how the struggle between the VB and artists exploits inherent tensions in liberal democracy. It then discusses competing definitions of the nation: an exclusive and closed one versus a more open and multi- or intercultural definitions. But it is the VB's populist claim on 'the people' that turns out to be the hardest to contest. The VB presents itself as the party of the people by juxtaposing itself to the progressive cultural elite. Theatre makers reject this populism, but have trouble escaping from it because of their position as part of the cultural elite. 0110 turns the VB's populism against the party because popular artists' performances at the event undermine the VB's claim on 'the people', but can only do this by reproducing the VB' opposition between leftist elite culture and the culture of 'the people'.

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In the last decade and a half, culturalist concepts such as spectacle, ritual, aesthetics and style have been increasingly applied to the study of totalitarianism, especially of Italian fascism (Roberts 2000, 2007). Street (2004) notes how they are also, to a lesser extent, applied to contemporary liberal democracies (e.g. Corner & Pels 2003). This paper asks whether and how the concepts of the spectacle and of aesthetic politics can be applied to the contemporary populist extreme right. The paper focuses on the Flemish extreme right part Vlaams Belang. More specifically, it studies the VB's discourse about culture. Although the importance of culture to contemporary politics in general is acknowledged - especially in works that focus on aesthetic aspects of politics (see for example Corner & Pels 2003) - and the contemporary extreme right is said to define groups on the basis of cultural markers rather than race (Wodak & Reisigl 2001: 9; cf. the notion of cultural racism), few studies look at the ways in which extreme right deals with culture in the strict sense (but see Gingrich 2002). Roberts (2000: 203) criticizes studies that focus on aesthetic aspects of fascism for their marginalization of ideology and argues for a "more open-ended enquiry, asking how the ongoing and contested ideational content plays into or against the undeniably significant element of ritual." Using Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) general discourse theory, and a modified version of Laclau's (1977, 2005a and b) theory of populism, and inspired by Mudde's (2007) work on extreme right populist ideology, this paper argues for an analysis of extreme right discourse centered around three main signifiers: people, elite, and nation. Such a discourse theoretical approach, it aims to show, is able to integrate aesthetic and ideological aspects. A discourse analysis of the VB program, VB publications, and parliamentary documents from the VB's foundation to the present day answers the following questions: Does culture function as a representation ofpeople, elite, and nation? Is there an evolution in the VB's discourse about culture? How are the signifiers people, elite, and nation constructed in the discourse about culture? What is the relative salience of each of the signifiers? And how do they relate to each other? The analysis looks not only at the extreme right's use of culture in representing 'the Flemish people', but also at counter-extreme right cultural strategies, and at the VB 's reaction to such cultural counter-strategies.

On 1 October 2006 - one week before the municipal elections - the 0110 concerts "for tolerance, against racism, against extremism, against gratuitous violence" were held in the Belgian cities of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and Charleroi. With these concerts the organizers wanted to make a statement against the extreme right Flemish-nationalist party Vlaams Belang (VB). This article looks at the discourse of the artists organizing and participating in the concerts and at how this was communicated through the concerts themselves, and asks how the VB reacted to this artistic statement geared against the party. Populism is the key to understanding this discursive struggle After discussing the VB and earlier antiracist initiatives in Belgium from the perspective of populism, the article presents the results of a discourse analysis of the external communication of the VB and of the 0110 organization, of press coverage of 0110, and of the live coverage of the concerts. It discusses three issues that were central to the struggle between 0110 and the VB: the relationship between 0110 and (institutionalized) politics, the discourse of tolerance, and the participation of 'popular' artists.

Popular culture as a site of ideological struggle and identity construction has a political relevance beyond politics stricto sensu (see Mouffe (2005) on 'politics' and 'the political'). But sometimes, popular artists engage explicitly in politics, for example through their involvement in electoral campaigns and events such as Rock Against Racism (Street 1997). This paper looks at how popular music events can play a role in politics exactly through the characterisation of certain artists as 'popular'. It combines theories of popular culture with Laclau's (2005) theory of populism. In both populist political discourses and discourses of popular culture, a chain of equivalence (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) between the populist/popular and 'the people' and an antagonism between 'the people' and 'the elite' is constructed (Williams 1983). Through this logic, popular culture can be activated politically in, but also - as the paper shows - against populist discourses. This framework informs a discourse-theoretical analysis (Carpentier & De Cleen 2008) of the '0110' concerts "for tolerance, against racism and extremism" held on 1 October 2006 - one week before the Belgian local elections - considered by many to be geared against the extreme right-wing party Vlaams Belang (VB). An analysis of the media coverage, and of 0110's and the VB's external communication shows how 'popular' artists' performance at 0110 gained political meaning.

The identity of ordinary people is constructed differently in competing discourses - nationalist, and socialist political discourses, discourses on cultural consumption, on the economy, etc. The meaning of 'the (ordinary) people' is never fixed and the object of constant struggle. Central to this paper are the complex interrelations between 'the people' as they are constructed culturally and politically. It looks at the relationship between popular music and politics (in the strict sense, see Mouffe 2005), more specifically populism. 'Populism' here refers to political projects, whereas 'popular' has a meaning within but also outside the realm of politics (see Williams 1983). In both cases, a relationship is suggested between that which is populist/popular and 'the people', and simultaneously a difference is assumed between 'the people' and 'the elite', between the popular and the non-popular. One of the areas where the political significance of popular culture lays is exactly in this juxtaposition (see Hall 1981). The paper focuses on how this relationship is articulated in populist political discourses where popular culture serves as one of the ways to juxtapose 'the people' to 'the elite' and to claim 'the people'. The paper explores the relationship between popular culture and populism by combining theories of popular culture with (political) theories on populism - mainly Laclau's (2005a, 2005b). To Laclau (2005b: 33), populism is not an ideology, but a way to articulate political demands (through an antagonism between people and elite), whatever those demands may be. Laclau's 'formalistic' approach serves as the theoretical framework for a discourse analysis of the struggle between the Flemish extreme right party Vlaams Belang and antiracist initiatives as it is played out in the arena of popular music. The results of a case study of '0110' are presented. On October 1st 2006 - one week before the Belgian communal elections - a number of artists organized concerts "for tolerance, against racism and extremism" in four Belgian cities. Laclau's perspective allows for analyzing both the Vlaams Belang's and 0110's discourse as populist, i.e. as competing discourses struggling for 'the people'. By getting artists of all kinds of genres to perform "for tolerance" 0110 attempted to break the link between 'the people' and the Vlaams Belang that is the key to its populist discourse. The paper analyzes how these competing discourses claim 'the people' through popular culture, how they strive to legitimize and delegitimize, and looks at the assumptions that underpin the idea that popular artists are likely to have fans that belong to the extreme right electorate. The paper argues that by breaking the (often implicit) link between popular artists and the 'party of the people', 0110 succeeds in putting the Vlaams Belang's populist discourse under pressure. Whereas most antiracist initiatives are delegitimized as actions of 'the elite' against the party of 'the ordinary people', popular artists speaking out through concerts that are organized independently of the political establishment and traditional civil society actors (labour unions, ngo's and the like) are harder to fit into the party's populist discourse.

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In his book Histoire de l’extrême droite en France (A history of the extreme right in France), the French historian Michel Winock shows how difficult it is to give a simple, accurate definition of the extreme right, which he presents as ‘a hard political tendency but a soft concept’. However, one of the characteristics which are common to most extreme right-wing parties is that they tend to inscribe their discourse on identity (not only from a political point of view but also from a cultural or even biological point of view) inside a marginal space and even a space of marginality, a domain for marginal personalities.We shall see that those organisations choose to place themselves deliberately into the margins of the political landscape and that they do it in both senses of the term: first because their discourses sound scandalous to democratic parties and secondly because those speeches often reflect their will to exclude themselves from the political game. Indeed, extreme right-wing theorists and politicians frequently refuse to exercise power because they consider that such an activity is almost inevitably tainted with compromise and corruption. So they prefer resorting to verbal – or even physical – violence in order to attract voters eager to protest against the supposed unfairness of the establishment. That is why extreme right-wing factions have to face a difficult situation in which they need to be marginal and scandalous to exist, but in which democratic, governmental parties can easily use their marginal character to turn them into political scarecrows and ensure their own dominance in an even surer way.

In diesen Studien wurde zu Recht die Heterogenität der rechtsextremen Parteiengruppe im Hinblick auf ihre historischen Wurzeln und Einbettung in die jeweiligen nationalen Parteiensysteme hervorgehoben. Jenseits davon gibt es allerdings auch markante Parallelen und Übereinstimmungen. Vlaams Blok (im Folgenden: VB) in Flandern und der französische Front National (im Folgenden: FN) sind dafür ein gutes Beispiel. Im folgenden gilt es die Situation des flämischen VB und des französischen FN seit Mitte der achtziger Jahre anhand einiger Schlüsselelemente der Parteiideologie, des politischen Wettbewerbs und des Parteiensystemwandels zu betrachten. Die Analyse der Sichtweisen und ideologischen Grundüberzeugungen, welche einen Teil der von FN und VB erschaffenen Utopie einer ‚neuen Gesellschaft‘ ausmachen, weisen auf bedeutende Gemeinsamkeiten im Ideensystem der beiden Parteien hin. Dieses besteht aus ethnozentristischen, autoritären und anti-egalitären Komponenten, die den Grundprinzipien der liberalen Demokratie widerstreiten. In den siebziger Jahren und zu Beginn der achtziger Jahre noch völlig erfolglos, konnten sich sowohl die flämischen als auch die französischen rechtsextremen Vertreter seit Mitte der achtziger Jahre als ernstzunehmende Konkurrenten der Mitte-Rechts-Parteien in ihren Ländern etablieren. Die zunehmende Wählerunterstützung hat aber nichts daran geändert, dass beide Parteien von einem Großteil der Wähler nach wie vor mit der extremen Rechten identifiziert werden. Anders als ihre populistischen Gegenstücke in Österreich, Italien und den Niederlanden, denen es sogar gelungen ist, in die nationalen Regierungen einzutreten, bleibt das Koalitionspotenzial der flämischen und französischen Rechtsextremisten so stark eingeschränkt, dass sie aus der Sphäre der „Mainstream-Politik“ weiter ausgeschlossen sind.; The purpose of this chapter is to contrast the situation of the Flemish Vlaams Blok and the French Front national on a number of key elements of party ideology, political competition and party system change since the mid 1980s. In deconstructing the ‘new society' utopia of the VB and FN, the analysis shows important similarities in the doctrine and, in spite of those parties' alleged commitment to representative democracy, illustrates a common and developed set of ethnocentrist, authoritarian, and anti-egalitarian values underpinning an essentially non-democratic ideology. The analysis draws on the electoral success, organisational development and institutionalisation of the far right in both countries and points to the comparable systemic isolation of those parties despite the growth and stabilisation of their electorates.

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The purpose of this chapter is to contrast the situation of the Flemish Vlaams Blok and the French Front national on a number of key elements of party ideology, political competition and party system change since the mid 1980s. In deconstructing the ‘new society' utopia of the VB and FN, the analysis shows important similarities in the doctrine and, in spite of those parties' alleged commitment to representative democracy, illustrates a common and developed set of ethnocentrist, authoritarian, and anti-egalitarian values underpinning an essentially non-democratic ideology. The analysis draws on the electoral success, organisational development and institutionalisation of the far right in both countries and points to the comparable systemic isolation of those parties despite the growth and stabilisation of their electorates. This is the English version of: Ivaldi (Gilles), Swyngedouw (Marc), 2006, « Rechtsextremismus in populistischer Gestalt. Front National und Vlaams Blok » in Decker (Frank) (Hrsg.), Populismus. Gefahr für die Demokratie oder nützliches Korrektiv?, Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, pp.121-143