Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VICTIMEUR (The New Politics of Victimhood in Post-Socialist Europe)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-10-01 al 2023-09-30
Main contributions and findings
Notions of historical and collective victimhood has become one of the main battlefields for populists. Imagery of historical and war suffering, grievances directed at the ‘West’ to frequent references to past oppression and injustice has increasingly been deployed by right-wing populists in eastern Europe relying on an augmented (and exclusivist) sense of national pride. Although ideational and historical sources of populist discourse in the region have often been overlooked by analysts stressing the primacy of socioeconomic drivers of populism, this project enquires into the ideational underpinnings of populism in the region. It studies both the ideational content of populism vis-à-vis various forms of victimhood as well as its social base. This project thus asks:
How has victimhood featured in politics and political competition in postcommunist Europe in the past two decades? How and why has it featured in the populist rulebook? And how has it resonated?
This project answered these questions by focusing on political and historical constructions of victimhood in the post-communist and post-conflict Europe where sources of historical and conflict-related victimhood are ample and diverse. There, narratives of victimhood have been increasingly applied to justify (often illiberal) policies (e.g. asylum), demark power relations (e.g. marginalize political rivals) and legitimize political decisions (e.g. in foreign policy). Starting with providing a wider conceptualization of victimhood and its role in populism, the project offers a deeper understanding of the various roles of victimhood – as a unifying bond as well as a polarizing identity definer. It then studies how victimhood featured in politics and political competition of this region, specifically looking at the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia, in the past 20 years and introduces a novel understanding of social and political victimhood linked to collective grievances that foreground identities and a sense of ontological security.
This project has three key specific research objectives:
1. To conceptualize victimhood narratives, notions and understandings.
2. To empirically study how victimhood plays out in politics of postcommunist Europe.
3. To conduct cross-case comparison to tease out generalizations about inferences in country cases.
Notions of historical and collective victimhood has become one of the main battlefields for populists. Imagery of historical and war suffering, grievances directed at the ‘West’ to frequent references to past oppression and injustice has increasingly been deployed by right-wing populists in eastern Europe relying on an augmented (and exclusivist) sense of national pride. Although ideational and historical sources of populist discourse in the region have often been overlooked by analysts stressing the primacy of socioeconomic drivers of populism, this project enquires into the ideational underpinnings of populism in the region. It studies both the ideational content of populism vis-à-vis various forms of victimhood as well as its social base. This project thus asks:
How has victimhood featured in politics and political competition in postcommunist Europe in the past two decades? How and why has it featured in the populist rulebook? And how has it resonated?
This project answered these questions by focusing on political and historical constructions of victimhood in the post-communist and post-conflict Europe where sources of historical and conflict-related victimhood are ample and diverse. There, narratives of victimhood have been increasingly applied to justify (often illiberal) policies (e.g. asylum), demark power relations (e.g. marginalize political rivals) and legitimize political decisions (e.g. in foreign policy). Starting with providing a wider conceptualization of victimhood and its role in populism, the project offers a deeper understanding of the various roles of victimhood – as a unifying bond as well as a polarizing identity definer. It then studies how victimhood featured in politics and political competition of this region, specifically looking at the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia, in the past 20 years and introduces a novel understanding of social and political victimhood linked to collective grievances that foreground identities and a sense of ontological security.
This project has three key specific research objectives:
1. To conceptualize victimhood narratives, notions and understandings.
2. To empirically study how victimhood plays out in politics of postcommunist Europe.
3. To conduct cross-case comparison to tease out generalizations about inferences in country cases.
This project started with conceptual work and data collection via fieldwork in year 1 and continued on with further data collection via focus groups and interviews in year 2. This project delivered both academic and non-academic publications that each targeted various aspects of victimhood politics in Europe. As part of the project, I participated and also organized a number of events, delivered a new module (Memory Politics) at University of North Carolina and commented on a range of media in English, Czech and Bosnian. This project was first hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the PI developed a definition and conceptual framework of victimhood that consists of three key characteristics: victimhood’s appeals to ontological security, morality and teleology. This work consisted of presentations for the faculty, participation in workshops and conferences and publication of an article in the Journal for Contemporary European Studies. Teaching was also conducted (Justice and Memory Politics in Easter Europe) for graduate students at UNC. In the empirical part, the PI conducted fieldwork in Czechia, Hungary and Serbia in April 2022 and also took on a fellowship in Prague, Czechia, at the Institute of Contemporary History from April to August 2023. The fieldwork consisted of expert interviews and observations in the countries. The PI also conducted focus groups in Serbia and Czechia with young people and their perceptions of victimhood in their respective countries.
Conceptually, the project advanced out understanding of how victimhood narratives of suffering, oppression, injustice and traumas features in contemporary politics across the political spectrum. This project defines victimhood as the socio-political expression of identities, positions and narratives that may be caused by crimes, injustice and trauma, but may also be inverted, appropriated and fabricated. Given this definition, while often approached as a tool of populist, nationalist and/or authoritarian leaders, using (especially historical narratives of ) victimhood for the purposes of defending democracy and liberalism has equally become commonplace.
This project clarified our understanding of victimhood in a broader sense as a political tool that consists of three key characteristics: victimhood’s appeals to ontological security, morality and teleology. First, it’s appeals to victimhood of one side presuppose vilification of the other side. For example, in foreign policy this consists of presenting one’s national suffering as a matter of highest national importance that securitizes the issue. Second, narratives of victimhood present linear and schematic stories of one side as a sufferer and another as a culprit, thus suggesting moral hierarchies. Third, past historical suffering is teleologically used as a method to showcase future threats as history repeating itself, therefore providing a teleological understanding of victimhood.
As the projects shows on the case of the Czech Republic, defence of liberal values and democracy has increasingly been used by the Czech political elites as a justification for reviving historical narratives of victimhood and leveraging them to legitimise and justify political choices, such as regarding foreign policy. The application of victimhood as a tool for democratic defence provides the main contribution of this project, arguing for a deeper understanding of victimhood as a tool of securitisation.
Conceptually, the project advanced out understanding of how victimhood narratives of suffering, oppression, injustice and traumas features in contemporary politics across the political spectrum. This project defines victimhood as the socio-political expression of identities, positions and narratives that may be caused by crimes, injustice and trauma, but may also be inverted, appropriated and fabricated. Given this definition, while often approached as a tool of populist, nationalist and/or authoritarian leaders, using (especially historical narratives of ) victimhood for the purposes of defending democracy and liberalism has equally become commonplace.
This project clarified our understanding of victimhood in a broader sense as a political tool that consists of three key characteristics: victimhood’s appeals to ontological security, morality and teleology. First, it’s appeals to victimhood of one side presuppose vilification of the other side. For example, in foreign policy this consists of presenting one’s national suffering as a matter of highest national importance that securitizes the issue. Second, narratives of victimhood present linear and schematic stories of one side as a sufferer and another as a culprit, thus suggesting moral hierarchies. Third, past historical suffering is teleologically used as a method to showcase future threats as history repeating itself, therefore providing a teleological understanding of victimhood.
As the projects shows on the case of the Czech Republic, defence of liberal values and democracy has increasingly been used by the Czech political elites as a justification for reviving historical narratives of victimhood and leveraging them to legitimise and justify political choices, such as regarding foreign policy. The application of victimhood as a tool for democratic defence provides the main contribution of this project, arguing for a deeper understanding of victimhood as a tool of securitisation.
The project’s results have been communicated via a variety of channels, including newspaper interviews, TV commentaries, blog posts and workshop organization. For example, in the Balkans, the PI took part in expert discussions for the newspaper Oslobodjenje about democratic futures. The PI also organized a specialized workshop on victimhood politics in March 2022 in Canada with leading scholars in the field, leading to ongoing collaboration on the issues and co-written article (currently revising a piece for Perspectives on Politics with a colleague from Chapel Hill). New collaboration were indeed one of the main channels of communication of the project’s results and contributions, leading to new generation of ideas and joint projects that the PI is pursuing after the end of the project.