Ideology of Non-system Parties in Europe: the Revising of Populism

The article explores the ideology of non-system parties in the context of a reassessment of “populism” in the form of a broad ideological platform that reflects deep socio-economic processes and the inability of elites to provide an adequate response to new challenges. Non-system is understood primarily as an opposition to the neoliberal ideological and political system with an extremely significant role in the party-political space as a whole. For the purposes of studying the presence of certain ideas and concepts, a discourse analysis of documents is used, the ideology of party movements is considered from the point of view of an identitarian approach, which presupposes the presence of identity as a concept in modern socio-political processes. The methodological approach is based on the concept of a systemic nonlinear division between supporters of neoliberalism (anti-identism) and supporters of identism. The article deals with the ideological program of the parties, the general portrait of their voters, as well as the rating of threats and challenges. It concludes that the ideology of non-system parties is based on the universality of democratic values and on the right to defend one’s way of life and thoughts within the framework of the country, society, religion, and economy. It is the idea of having a permanent and unshakable identity of the majority that implies the rejection of uncontrolled immigration, the protection of the national labor market and the new working class, and the overall priority of citizens’ well-being over geopolitical issues. The political confrontation between non-system parties and ruling circles has influenced a change in the consciousness of voters has shown that there is no monopoly on ideology, there is no single “true” interpretation of liberal democracy, as there can be no monopoly of leftist and left-liberal ideas on the protection of workers of routine labor and the protection of social justice. The identist parties are gradually gaining positions at the national level and in the European Parliament, which in the next electoral cycle will affect the composition of the European Commission, and their non-system character becomes relative due to the adaptation of their ideas by mainstream parties.

Baltic-Scandinavian microregion, populism, identity, identism, ideologies, neoliberalism, non-system parties