Populism and religion in Central and Eastern Europe

Populism is a re-emerging modern topic. Since 2015 it has been one of the most mentioned and analyzed issues in the political sciences, international relations, and sociological academic literature. Although populism is a worldwide phenomenon it is also highly regionalized. This research focuses on link between populism, nationalism, and religion in Central and Eastern Europe. Differences seen between this region, Western Europe, and United States are also examined. In this paper, we offer a novel understanding of populist phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe based on decisive impacts of geopolitical and geo-cultural status of the region. This populist phenomenon can be traced back to “nurture itself” on the traumatized collective identity and a special kind of mindset, which is termed as wounded collective identity in this paper.