Right-Wing Turn of Public Culture and the Rise of Populism in Poland: March of Independence as a Ritual of National Identity Building

A key feature of thin populist ideology is a sharp division of the social world into “good people” and “bad elites.” Populist ideology “thickens” when it is combined with another ideology, for instance when right-wing populists formulate this distinction in terms of a nativist or religious discourse with the aim of defining “aliens” or “enemies.” Ideological thickening of populism is boosted by and contributes to the cultural process we call symbolic thickening. A thin symbolic system, representing a particular identity has relatively few symbols with rather simple connotations, is amenable to many interpretations, and is thus potentially attractive to a large, heterogeneous group of people. It can be “thickened” by the addition of new, often tightly interrelated symbols. The resulting “thick” symbolic system offers a more restrictive definition of collective identity and thus attracts a narrower group of people. Our central argument is that the rise of (right-wing) populism is both a political and cultural process. In Poland, it takes the form of a powerful cultural-political feedback loop. A gradual symbolic thickening of the Polish public culture through the intensification of Catholic and nationalist discourses resulted in the expansion of the discursive opportunity structure. This produced conditions conducive to the thickening of populist ideologies and helped to increase the legitimacy of populist movements and parties, proclaiming an exclusionary vision of Polish national identity. The rising legitimacy and popularity of the increasingly vigorous “thick” populism, in turn, contributed to the further symbolic thickening of public culture. The argument is based on detailed description and interpretation of the celebrations of the Polish Independence Day, including the performances and visual displays of its current key event, the far-right March of Independence.