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Using the Past in Populist Communicational Strategies

DOI:10.1163/25888072-BJA10013
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Ionut Chiruta at The Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarization (HEPP), University of Helsinki
Ionut Chiruta
  • The Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarization (HEPP), University of Helsinki
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Abstract

This article investigates how political strategies interrelate populist rhetoric with memory issues. By looking at the case of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) from Romania, between 2017–2019, this article reveals how the slide to populism, generated by cyclical confrontations with the rule of law institutions, steered the PSD to adopt conspirational beliefs and appeal to traumatic memories to frame the judiciary as the new Securitate. Through the use of discourse analysis and virtual ethnography, this article analyses party resolutions and political rallies. This article explains how the populist rhetoric created a new hegemonic narrative of the judiciary, by intersecting its values and symbolism with the memory of the former Securitate from the Communist period.
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©  , , |:./-
  () –
brill.com/popu
Using the Past in Populist Communicational
Strategies
How the Memory of Securitate is Instrumentalised in Romanian Politics?
Ionut Valentin Chiruta
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
ionut-valentin.chiruta@ut.ee
Abstract
This article investigates how political strategies interrelate populist rhetoric with mem-
ory issues. By looking at the case of the Social Democratic Party () from Romania,
between 2017–2019, this article reveals how the slide to populism, generated by cycli-
cal confrontations with the rule of law institutions, steered the  to adopt conspi-
rational beliefs and appeal to traumatic memories to frame the judiciary as the new
Securitate. Through the use of discourse analysis and virtual ethnography, this article
analyses party resolutions and political rallies. This article explains how the populist
rhetoric created a new hegemonic narrative of the judiciary, by intersecting its values
and symbolism with the memory of the former Securitate from the Communist period.
Keywords
parties – Romania – populism – memory – rule of law
1 Introduction
Between 2015–2019, the Romanian political scene witnessed a return to popu-
lism spearheaded by the rhetoric of the Social Democrat party (), which
was centred on strategic exploitations of the past to x the problems of the
present. Similar to other parties from Central and Eastern Europe, such as
PiS (Poland),  (Hungary) and  (Bulgaria), , along with the
Alliance of the European Liberals and Democrats () developed a mixture
... References to the past feature prominently in populist discourses and its political imaginary, just as historical legacies shape the opportunities and conditions under which populism gains political relevance. Yet, while these historical dimensions of populism are often tacitly acknowledged, explicit scholarly engagement with them is still in its nascent stage and has only of late found resonance in the field of populism studies (Chiruta 2020;Ding, Slater, and Zengin 2021;Elçi 2021;Hesová 2021;Volk 2022b), accompanied by emerging research in memory (politics) studies (Apryshchenko and Karnaukhova 2019;Balthazar 2019;De Cesari and Kaya 2019;Bourgeois 2020;Đureinović 2022;Kralj 2021;Lucksted 2022;Manucci 2019;Ferreira 2021;Schneider 2020;Rosenfeld 2021;Ugur-Cinar and Altınok 2021;Verovšek 2016Verovšek , 2020bVerovšek , 2020aZubrzycki and Woźny 2020;Wijermars 2019;Miklóssy and Kangaspuro 2021), and political historiography (Chiruta 2020;Gonçalves 2021;Finchelstein 2019;Kenny 2017;Saunders 2020;Mercer and Pattison 2022). ...
... References to the past feature prominently in populist discourses and its political imaginary, just as historical legacies shape the opportunities and conditions under which populism gains political relevance. Yet, while these historical dimensions of populism are often tacitly acknowledged, explicit scholarly engagement with them is still in its nascent stage and has only of late found resonance in the field of populism studies (Chiruta 2020;Ding, Slater, and Zengin 2021;Elçi 2021;Hesová 2021;Volk 2022b), accompanied by emerging research in memory (politics) studies (Apryshchenko and Karnaukhova 2019;Balthazar 2019;De Cesari and Kaya 2019;Bourgeois 2020;Đureinović 2022;Kralj 2021;Lucksted 2022;Manucci 2019;Ferreira 2021;Schneider 2020;Rosenfeld 2021;Ugur-Cinar and Altınok 2021;Verovšek 2016Verovšek , 2020bVerovšek , 2020aZubrzycki and Woźny 2020;Wijermars 2019;Miklóssy and Kangaspuro 2021), and political historiography (Chiruta 2020;Gonçalves 2021;Finchelstein 2019;Kenny 2017;Saunders 2020;Mercer and Pattison 2022). ...
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