This interview is based on Lazaros Karavasilis’s new article:
Karavasilis, L. (2025). What we talk about when we talk about ‘the elite’ in populism studies: re-examining an often-neglected term in the cases of Die Linke and AfD. Critical Discourse Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2025.2496630
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This article discusses how ‘the elite’ are constructed in populist discourse. Why is it important to investigate this construction when studying progressive and reactionary forms of populism?
Over the past decades, the debate about ‘populism’ in academic circles has become a prominent research topic. Of course, the simultaneous emergence of leaders, parties, and movements featuring certain populist elements has also contributed to this, leading scholars to new understandings and conceptualisations of the term. However, most studies tend to ascribe the term to political actors, almost without critical reflection on the term’s suitability and applicability to describe said actors. Gradually, every challenger actor to established liberal-democratic contexts becomes a ‘populist’, but if everything is populist, then nothing is. This overuse mostly on far-right actors brings the danger of obscuring their racist, nationalist, or fascist elements, and at the same time renders every left-wing political alternative equally dangerous for the institutional democratic order.
In my recent publication, I address that issue by examining a core element of populism that has not been given proper attention in both theoretical and empirical accounts of the term, that of ‘the elite’. Compared to the other core element of ‘the people’, ‘the elite’ has been given minimal attention in populism studies and based on that, my paper discusses how the further analysis of the concept can offer more clarity to the application of populism as an analytical tool. Building on that, I explore the ideological components that can be attached to ‘the elite’ in an attempt to distinguish progressive and reactionary understandings of the concept, which, after all, may not be primarily populist. Put simply, if every challenger actor is considered populist, then ‘the elite’ can help to distinguish if they truly are and to what extent.
You investigate two empirical cases of parties that have been referred to as ‘populist’ on the left and (far) right in Germany: Die Linke and AfD. How do these parties differ in their construction of ‘the elite’?
The problem with both parties is that a significant part of the literature tends to treat them as populist based on their anti-establishment appeal and therefore a potential threat to the liberal-democratic institutional context of Germany. My analysis addresses that problem by exploring how each party constructs ‘the elite’ in their respective discourse, and shows that while both parties feature populist elements, they exist on a secondary level to other, more ideological understandings of ‘the elite’.
In particular, the study of Die Linke’s discourse in electoral campaign periods from 2009 to 2019 shows that ‘the elite’ is constructed as an amalgamation of actors (federal government, Angela Merkel, the EU, etc.) who serve the neoliberal economic system and ultimately, capitalism’s needs. In the case of AfD, we see a change in how the party constructs the concept. In the absence of a clear ideological orientation during its first years, AfD articulates ‘the elite’ mainly in a populist manner to highlight its anti-establishment appeal and with reference to political elites in Germany and the EU level. However, intra-party changes provided a clear and dominant nationalist orientation that subsequently changed the meaning of ‘the elite’ to include those who acted against the national identity of Germany, either in the institutional form (federal government, EU, other German parties) or in the form of refugees. For AfD, the latter are enabled by the governmental and EU actors to come to Germany and endanger the national cohesion. Both cases show that through the detailed analysis of ‘the elite’ we can clarify what populism is, what it is not and more importantly, how certain understandings are susceptible to change over time in a party’s discourse.
You discuss how Die Linke’s anti-elitism is mainly cast in egalitarian terms (‘working people’ vs the capitalist/neoliberal ‘system’) and AfD articulates its anti-elite position primarily through nationalism (‘natives’ vs ‘foreigners’). Considering this, to what extent is populism still a useful concept in understanding the discourse of these parties?
What the analysis of Die Linke and AfD questions is the centrality of populism in understanding these parties and the discourse that they construct. This is why my theoretical proposal in the paper is to emphasise ‘the elite’ as an analytical tool to distinguish populist and ideological understandings. That said, I think that the populism concept has theoretical, empirical, and analytical usefulness, but we need to employ it after careful consideration of its suitability to explain certain actors. Critical reflection and a more nuanced perception of the term will allow us to use the analytical potential of populism, and at the same time, will not obscure the importance of other concepts to explain anti-establishment actors. I hope that my article is a stepping stone towards that direction.
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Lazaros Karavasilis is a member of the RPRN and a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS), at the University of Bremen. He is currently working on the DFG-funded project ‘Between Populism and Radical Democracy, between Party and Movement: The Discursive Afterlife of Square Movements’. His academic research interests include the theoretical and empirical study of populism, radical left and radical right parties in Europe, the connection between parties and social movements, discourse theory and analysis and the relationship between discourse and ideology.
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