Populist Memory Politics and the Performance of Victimhood: Analysing the Political Exploitation of Historical Injustice in Central Europe

Abstract

Right-wing populists often mobilize popular support by employing a people-versus-elite dichotomy in which they cast ‘the people’ as the underdog, or by ‘performing’ crisis to discredit the elite. Such ‘underdogism’, and the reliance on crisis more broadly, remains an effective strategy for as long as populists are in opposition. But what happens when populists gain power? One would expect that they would not be able to exploit their position as effectively and their appeal would weaken drastically. In certain cases, however, they still manage to sustain the underdog illusion. This article argues that memory politics are an important locus for populists to maintain their underdog rhetoric, and within that field the performance of victimhood is key. Building on theories about the performance of crisis and recent trends in research on memory politics in Central Europe, we propose a framework for understanding how governing right-wing populists justify vindictive policies and thus try to cement their power.