Is Religion Central to Radical Right Populism?

Several scholars have stressed the relationship between radical right populism and religion, especially posing the role of religion in what they call civilizational populism (Brubaker 2017, Yilmaz and Morieson 2021). However, it could be claimed that some of the parties and movements that have been considered as radical right populist, such as the Progress Party in Norway or Juiste Antword in the Netherlands, would better fit the nationalist conservative category (Hazony 2022). The present paper begins by discussing the similarities and differences between radical right populism and national conservatism, and then probes into the role of religion in both. The main argument is that while in both cases religion serves to differentiate between ingroup and outgroup, in the case of radical right populism it also signals the elites as different and inimical to the people, while for the latter religion is intrinsic to the way they understand the world as hierarchical.