EUROPEAN TRADE UNION DIALOGUE TRADE UNIONS AND RIGHT-WING POPULISM IN EUROPE Country Study Slovenia Matej Klari č March 2023 A DEFINITION OF RIGHT-WING ­POPULISM Populism is usually associated with the rise to power of right-wing and far-right movements in the West, although the term was originally introduced into po­litical science to refer to left-wing political move­ments(including the People’s Party) that campaigned for more rights for peasants and workers in the Unit­ed States of America(USA) in the late 19th century. After the end of the Second World War, the term spread from the USA to other parts of the world; ar­riving first in Latin America, where it was used as a la ­bel for the style of government of Juan Perón in Argen­tina and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil(Šalaj 2018). Šalaj(2018) traces the origins of today’s meaning back to the 1950s. At the time, Edward A. Shills defined populism as“the existence of populace dissatisfaction with the current social order imposed by the ruling class, whereby people believe that this ruling class has a monopoly on power, property, and culture.” The most influential contemporary definition of populism, as described by Szalay, comes from the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, who defined populism as“an ideology that divides society into two opposing groups, the common people and a corrupt elite, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the will of the people”(Šalaj 2018). A similar definition had been proposed somewhat earlier by Torcuato Di Tella(1995), who believed that populism could be de­fined as“a political movement that emphasises‘the interests, culture and spontaneous feelings of ordi­nary people against those of the privileged elite’.” The central idea of populism is that society is divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups: The hon­est people and the corrupt elite. THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LEFT-WING AND RIGHT-WING POPULISM Šalaj(2018) distinguishes between left-wing and right­wing populism. If the elites are predominantly liberal, populism will be reactionary, as has been the case mainly in Europe over the last two decades. If, on the other hand, the dominant elites are mainly conserva­tive, populism — as illustrated by the cases of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Ra­fael Correa in Ecuador — will be based on left-wing po ­litical values, such as defending the interests of work­ers against those of rich capitalists. However, it is im ­portant to note a crucial distinction between the two populisms. Left-wing ideology sees the problems pri ­marily at the level of the system and wants to change it to the benefit of all people. Right-wing populism, i. e., the far right, focuses on particularised threats,“dan­gerous others”, often promising that their elimination will be sufficient to fix the problems(thus shifting the blame onto immigrants, ethnic minorities, the influ ­ence of foreign capital, etc.). It, therefore, does not want to change the system fundamentally. 1