“Religious linkages provide the illiberal movements with both a sense of moral superiority and an organizational network,” our Senior Research Fellow Zsolt Enyedi said in an interview with Illiberalism.org.

“We shouldn’t dismiss references to alternative values as red herrings or as smokescreens just because political actors also have materialistic goals or because they themselves fall short of their propagated ideas,” he argued.

“21st century populism and illiberalism operate in a world where culture wars have such an enormous impact on alliances, discourses and even on governance,” he said.

The interview is based on his Working Paper published in the Authlib project led by the CEU Democracy Institute.

Read the full interview here.