Lost in modernization: populist radical-right voters between resentment, nostalgia and ethno-populist ideology.

In this paper we argue that populism is structurally embedded in the crisis of organized modernity and that populist radical right parties mobilize the resentment of the losers of modernization. Our proposition is that resentment paves the way for the emergence of an ethno-populist habitus, masterfully expressed in the slogan of ‘our own people first’ – an assertion which combines elements of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism . The ethno-populist outlook is responsive to the feelings of disintegration, relative deprivation and powerlessness among discontented natives. Simultaneously, populist revanchism, as a form of dualistic discursive closure, succeeds at scapegoating the ‘cultural Other’ and the political establishment as the origin of all of the people’s problems. These enemies of the people help constitute a substantial community (ethnos) and as the absolute sovereign body (demos). The paper investigates how the populist radical right vote (i.e. Vlaams Belang in Flanders-Belgium) is related to feelings of resentment, nostalgia and whether such voting behavior is embedded in an ethno-populist worldview. Resentment is operationalized using four latent constructs: ontological insecurity, economic insecurity, discrimination and powerlessness. We also examine how and to what extent structural positions, feelings of resentment and nostalgia have an effect on populist voting and to what extent the impact is mediated by anti-immigrant, authoritarian and populist attitudes. In terms of methods, we apply a multinomial logistic regression approach to the 2019 Belgian National Election Study.