ABSTRACT
The pathology of populism is not only diagnosed as an individual malady or defect, but also as one that afflicts communities and nations. The mainstream academic literature on populism is characteristically anti-populist and, in some cases, tends to treat its subject matter with the kind of hostility that is usually directed at an enemy. The politicization of culture contains the potential for expressing conflicts and problems in a form that is difficult to resolve. In the twenty-first century, the meaning of populism has been distorted through the tendency of its opponents to attribute a wide range of negative qualities to it. One of the objectives of Populism and the Culture Wars in Europe is to explore the phenomenon of anti-populism – a powerful narrative that dominates the media landscape in Western societies. Anti-populism has constructed a culturally warped view of populism that casts a movement questioning the elite cultural consensus in a negative light.
