Otherness as a Commodity: Rethinking Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe from the time of ‘Global Socialism’

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomena of contemporary Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe by tracing out the genealogy of far-right tradition from the time of ‘global socialism’. It precisely explores how Communist Bulgaria’s and Communist Poland’s rhetoric of internationalism and unity was instrumentally exploited to deploy eugenic policies against the Muslim and Jewish population, respectively. The article is organised into three parts. First, it discusses how socialist authorities reordered domestic heritage and cultural landscapes to enhance ruling ethnic majorities. Second, it shows how the reaction of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Polish United Workers’ Party to the international turmoil in the Mediterranean region was strategically performed to scapegoat internal dissidents and ascribe them to Turkish nationalism or Zionism. Third, it postulates how such an instrumentalisation became the Party’s ideological commodity during the decolonisation age, in turn provoking a decoupling from the Global South even before 1989. As a result, this investigation shows how extreme far-right cultures have penetrated the postsocialist predicament and continue to operate culturally by dismissing otherness from the Polish and Bulgarian national identity.