ABSTRACT
A growing trend of populism has emerged in Europe since the 1990s. Although the type of populism that has received most scholarly attention in Europe is the one positioned to the right of the political spectrum, some researchers have documented left-wing populism as well. A far right populist thread can be found in countries that have experienced authoritarian regimes in their recent history, as is the case of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, but also in the Southern European countries that experienced fascism until the 1970s. Stemming from the construction of an imagined and idealised people' comes, as mentioned above, the concept of the dangerous other'. Anti-elitism is also firmly ensconced in populist rhetoric and may be considered as a different form of othering' behaviour. Populism equates the people with the ethnic nation and thus strengthens the eternal value of the organic community and reinforces its exclusionary nature.
