Stephen Sestanovich,
Wash PostEuropean politics today shows how much has changed since the liberal populism of the late 1980s and early '90s. Populism is now almost everywhere illiberal â thriving on ethnic hostility and exclusion. East European movements and leaders used to denounce a corrupt elite that they said blocked integration into a broad democratic Western community. Today they say real democracy is impossible unless that integration is reversed. In the view of 21st-century populists, only the elite benefit from integration.
