ABSTRACT
Since populism has traditionally been related to the radical right-wing party, Danish People’s Party, in the Danish context, the uses of passion and emotions to foster collective political identification have been under suspicion. However, two aspects must be taken into account: the welfare reforms adopted by the social democratic government (2011–2015) in line with the philosophy of the ‘competition state’ and the increasing nationalism and anti-migration measures as a consequence of the major role played by the radical right wing. This scenario opens up a double reaction from the left against neoliberal policies and the exclusionary understanding of the collective (Danish) identity. In this sense, two parties, the Red-Green Alliance and the Alternative, offer different affective bonds that enhance other group identities. The Red-Green Alliance, belonging to the radical left tradition, emphasizes the division between the interests of the elites (often times in the form of transnational elites that undermine national interests) and those of the Danes. There is no strong notion of ‘people’ as unifying signifiers but the appeals to the community, the Danes, and ordinary people aim to enhance a wider identification together with a renewed ‘nationalism’, grounded in the pride of the welfare society and open to cultural diversity. The Alternative, on the other hand, is a new party emerged from the understanding of an existing crisis without a clear populist line. Since the party identifies one of the main problems in the ‘crisis of empathy’, it creates a new framework for politics of emotion in which social bonds must be restored through empathy and reinventing the welfare state. Thus the political identity, constituted by emotional empathy, relies on individual motivations and affectual recognition rather than a strong common identity. All in all, the left-wing parties attempt to recover the ‘ties that bind’ through new identification forms to promote more individualized or collective motivations as alternative to the non-ideological centre and nativism by the radical right.
