The youth wing of Vlaams Belang on a retreat. Wikimedia. Public domain.
Many researchers and commentators of populist politics tend to confuse populism with nationalism. This confusion makes the study of populism in the European context particularly difficult.
Benjamin De Cleen, assistant professor at the VUB Communication Studies Department, argues that in order to understand the Populist Radical Right we have to start from a clear conceptual distinction between populism and nationalism. The articulation of populism and nationalism is contingent but not necessary.
