Illiberalism and the Issue of Demographic Decline

In their book, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (2018), Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, enumerate the following four reasons to explain the surge of the populist trend: The elitism of current liberal democracies, immigration and changes in ethnic compositions of traditionally homogeneous populations, neoliberal policies of privatization, as well as the lack of touch between mainstream political parties and the people they claim to represent. The second issue mentioned by Eatwell and Goodwin, the question concerning immigration and changes in the ethnic compositions of populations is also inextricably connected to the population decline facing virtually all of Europe. In the last decades, Central and Eastern European countries, especially postcommunist ones, have suffered from a radical demographic decline and low fertility rates. Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes (2020) have emphasized that the combination of massive emigration and largely homogeneous and ageing populations help to explain the popularity of the far-right and anti-liberal parties in the postcommunist space. Jaroslaw Kuisz (2023) also notes that while demographic challenges persist in all of Europe, this issue is especially pertinent among the so-called V4 countries – Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary –, which have seen exceptionally rapid decline in their populations over the last three decades when compared to other European countries – an issue that is also aggravated by the departure of highly educated professionals such as doctors. Especially Hungary and Poland have faced the issue of mass emigration that has concerned, in particular, young, educated, and skilled workers looking for better wages and some also looking to escape the starkly nationalist values in their home countries. This presentation analyzes the politics, policies, and ideological aspects involved in the fight against the threatening demographic decline. It is suggested that a distinct version of biopolitics aimed to fight this demographic decline is developing among the European far-right. The paper explores how this biopolitical fight against demographic decline is legitimized as a battle against perceived threats to the health of the nation, such as “population replacement” and “Islamization” of Europe (e.g., Raspail 2011) as well as neo-liberal policies of privatization that threaten to atomize the population (c.f., Slobodian 2018). Exploring how contemporary far-right movements and illiberal democracies combine far-right ideas and conspiracy theories with nationalistically attuned economic as well as cultural policies, the paper argues that the contemporary European far-right can be analyzed fruitfully through the framework of biopolitics.