The New Politicized Women and Youth of the Central European Right: 1999-2009

Denman Undergraduate Research Forum 2010: 3rd Place, HumanitiesRecipient of Arts and Sciences Honors Program Autumn 2009 GrantIn the years immediately following the collapse of socialism in 1989 the revival of conservative "family values" and gender roles in the context of a masculinized political culture permeated Central European politics. In Poland and Hungary in particular, this movement was championed by the nationalist and religious Right: in 1990s Poland, women were notably absent in political participation, representation, and even discourse about traditional women’s issues; simultaneously in Hungary, the same rightist sentiment impassioned Hungarian youth culture, particularly amongst young men. However, in the last ten years the Central European Right has begun to reposition itself relative to both women and youth. Political discourse over issues pertaining to women is more visible and prevalent, often carried out in the mainstream by a public "Female Face." Increased right-wing willingness to openly engage women in discourse, coupled with unprecedented levels of right-wing female representation and a female populace which no longer distances itself so strongly from politics, means that women are in fact becoming the politics. Concurrently, radical or extreme right-wing youths of the 1990s have been mainstreamed as they have aged. Aligning with a more traditional, conservative rightist identity, many have joined or even, as in Hungary, founded the parties of today’s Central European Right with the ability to mobilize new youth for political purposes. Through analysis of primary and secondary sources from a wide range of media, this thesis will demonstrate how this has happened on three levels—party politics, cultural politics, biopolitics—suggest directions for future research on right-wing movements across Europe, and answer an increasing need for nuanced research on the mainstreaming of extremist social formations.A three-year embargo was granted for this item