Eastern European populists are deeper into speculative finance than their neoliberal predecessors

Evidence

Again, we can find examples of this convergence in a variety of contexts, as in the cases of Eastern European (seemingly statist-welfarist) populists like Hungary’s Orbán and Poland’s Kaczynski, who have become much more deeply embedded into global speculative financial mechanisms than have their openly neoliberal predecessors. Consider, for instance, Poland’s public refusal to accept Syrian refugees in 2017 (justified by the ultra-right discourse of the “Islamization of Europe”), while at the same time pursuing a conscious policy of opening domestic labor markets to economic migrants from South Asia through large corporate brokers. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 503

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core thesis on financialized populism — populists embedded in speculative capital while performing anti-globalist rhetoric. — connects to: Regressive populism and speculative finance are forming new alliances. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 57; Grassroots populist speculators understood modern financial fictions deeply — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 205