Ivan Krastev, Federico Finchelstein, and "postfascist" rightwing populism

Ivan Krastev, President of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, assesses the risks for European institutions of the current rise of rightwing populist parties in places like Hungary and Poland this way ("Über die Krise der liberalen Demokratie," Europäische Rundschau 46:2 2018):

Der Populismus heute ist keine Ruckkehr zum Faschismus des 20.Jahrhunderts. Der heutige Populismus unterscheidet sich in vieler Hinsicht vom klassischen Faschismus wie auch die kommunistischen Parteien der 1940er und 1950er Jahre sich von den kommunistischen Parteien der späten 1980er Jahre unterschieden. Wie Federico Finchelstein richtigerweise meint, ist der heutige Populismus ein postfaschistisches Phänomen. Die neuen Populisten glauben nicht an die verändernde Macht der Gewalt. Sie unterdrücken nicht in der gleichen Weise, wie dies die Faschisten taten. Aber sie glauben auch nicht an die Notwendigkeit einer Einschränkung der Macht der Mehrheit durch die Verfassung. In diesem Zusammenhang werden die verheerendsten Auswirkungen des Aufstiegs des Populismus in Osteuropa nicht auf der Ebene der nationalen Demokratien zu spüren sein - für sie wird es eine Herausforderung sein, aber sie werden nicht zerstört werden - , sondern auf der Ebene der Europäischen Union. Wie es derzeit aussieht, ist die Verbreitung illiberaler Demokratien in Osteuropa einer der groBen Risikofaktoren für einen Zerfall der EU und einen radikalen politischen Umbau des europäischen Kontinents.

{[Rightwing] populism today is not a throwback to the fascism of the 20th century. Today's populism differentiates itself in many ways from the classical fascism, just as the Communist Parties of the 1940s and 1950s distinguished themselves from the Communist Parties of the later 1980s. As Federico Finchelstein correctly argues, the populism of today is a postfascist phenomenon. The new populists don't believe in the transforming power of violence. They don't carry out suppression in the same way the fascists did. But they also do not believe in the necessity of constraints on power of the majority by the Constitution. In this connection, the most baleful effects of the rise of populism in eastern Europe will not be felt at the level of the national democracies - for them, it will be a challenge, but they won't be destroyed - but rather at the level of the European Union. As it now appears, the spread of illiberal democracies in eastern Europe is one of the biggest risk factors for a collapse of the EU and a radical political restructuring of the European continent.}

Krastev's article is a shorter German version of his April 12, 2018, speech in English to the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, Ivan Krastev on the Crisis of Liberal Democracy in Central Europe (full keynote):

An English adaptation of this presentation also appears as Eastern Europe's Illiberal Revolution: The Long Road to Democratic Decline Foreign Affairs May-June 2018.

Unforturnataly, the definition of "populism" also tends to be flexible. And the "postfascist" concept that Krastev cites from Finchelstein doesn't strike me as well founded. Finchelstein uses it in a different way than it is used, for instance, in describing the conservative Spanish People's Party (PP) as "postfascist," in which case it refers to the development of a more-or-less explicitly fascist party in the historical sense to a legitimately democratic party.

And Federico Finchelstein in his From Fascism to Populism in History (2017) derives his version of "postfascism" from the notion that Juan Perón's 1946-1955 government in Argentina was "first modern populist regime in history" and credits Perón with initiating "postfascism." I'll just say here I'm not comfortable with that framework, not least because the populist regimes of Perón in Argentina and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, the latter of which actually came first in time, were often carelessly crammed into the "fascist" category and there's a lot of ideological puffery around that to this day. Finchelstein at least recognizes that's a bad characterization in Perón's case, but still muddles that history in saying:

For General Perón, ... fascism was “an unrepeatable phenomenon, a classic style to define a precise and determined epoch.” As much as Perón mourned the loss of “poor Mussolini” and his fascism, he did not want to imitate the defeated past. He wanted to free Peronism from the charge of fascism, and the result was a postfascist, authoritarian, and antiliberal version of democracy.

Peronism is a very complex political movement that is still a major force in Argentina and that has evolved into diverse political trends over that decades that nevertheless identify as Peronist. I doubt there are a more than a handful at best of Peronists today that would argue that there was not an authoritarian streak in Peron's first Presidency. After Perón became President again in 1973 and died in office the following year, the disastrous Presidency of Isabel Perón with the truly sinister José López Rega calling the shots behind the scences really went very much in an authoritarian direction. Which was far surpassed in authoritarianism, brutality, and murder by the military dictatorship of 1976-83 that followed it.

And despite measures of repression, the elections of 1946 and 1951 in which Perón was elected President, both were competitive, seriously contested elections. That could not be said of the elections from 1955, when Perón was overthrown by a military coup, until 1973, when the Peronists, the most popular political party, were first again permitted to participate in a Presidential election. It was first and foremost the Peronists during that time who fought to re-establish free and fair democratic elections. This doesn't sound to me like a model Orban's or Tayyip Erdoğan's movements are likely to follow.