Economic nationalism in far-right party discourse

In recent years, far-right political parties enjoyed increasing electoral support, while reviving economic nationalist policy proposals in their programs. Anti-globalization sentiments, advocacy of trade tariffs, and scepticism against transnational institutions have become key features of far-right economic policy discourse. While prevalent accounts suggest that economic nationalism is peripheral to the core nativist and nationalist ideology, others have identified economic nationalist programs as response to market liberalism and globalization. This chapter will review both accounts and offer a reconciling perspective by showing how economic nationalism signifies the contextual conditions in which nationalism and nativism arise. It will be argued that the rise of nationalism is interrelated with a broader crisis of the neoliberal policy paradigm. The chapter thereby makes an important contribution to literature describing the rise of the far right as cultural backlash against rapid cultural change by highlighting that cultural backlash sentiments are often discursively legitimised through economic ideas.