Anti-Populism of the Left, Right, and Centre: Varieties of Anti-Populist Party Politics in the European “Populist Moment”

This paper examines varieties of anti-populist party politics from left to right that emerged against the backdrop of the much-discussed “populist moment” of the mid- to late 2010s in Europe. Situating the analysis in the special issue’s interest in an “anti-populist moment” that discursively co-constituted this “populist moment,” the paper keys in on the anti-populist campaign discourses of three political parties that took centre stage in the 2017 national parliamentary elections in their respective countries: GreenLeft in the Netherlands, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany, and the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in the Czech Republic. Drawing on and further developing a discursive approach to anti-populism as a political logic following Essex School or post-foundational discourse analysis, the paper identifies three distinct anti-populist constructions of the perceived threat of “populism”: a left-wing agonistic equating of populism with right-wing politics, a liberal-conservative claim to the centre ground against a horseshoe-like populist threat from left and right, and a right-wing appeal to resist an unholy alliance of “populists and communists.” The analysis situates each variety of anti-populism diachronically in these parties’ previous discursive-strategic orientations, especially their anti-far-right (GreenLeft) or anti-communist (CDU, ODS) appeals, as well as their subsequent developments over time. In diesem Beitrag werden Spielarten antipopulistischer Parteipolitik von links bis rechts untersucht, die vor dem Hintergrund des vieldiskutierten „populistischen Moments“ Mitte bis Ende der 2010er-Jahre in Europa in Erscheinung traten. Mit Blick auf das Interesse dieses Sonderhefts an einem den „populistischen Moment“ diskursiv mitkonstituierenden „antipopulistischen Moment“ werden die antipopulistischen Wahlkampfdiskurse dreier politischer Parteien fokussiert, die bei den nationalen Parlamentswahlen 2017 im jeweiligen Land in den Vordergrund rückten: GroenLinks in den Niederlanden, die Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) in Deutschland und die Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei ( Občanská demokratická strana , ODS) in Tschechien. Hierzu wird unter Rückgriff auf die postfundamentale Diskursanalyse der Essex School (PDA) ein diskursiver Ansatz zur Erforschung von Antipopulismus als politischer Logik herangezogen und weiterentwickelt. Insgesamt werden drei antipopulistische Konstruktionen der vermeintlichen Gefahr des „Populismus“ identifizi