Bulgaria’s far-right movements are rather heterogeneous as far as their activities and structures are concerned. Ideologically, however, they share similarities. The framework within which they inscribe themselves is the typical fusion of ethnonational xenophobia and anti-political-establishment populism. The former finds its roots in the country’s ethnic miscellaneousity. In the local right-wing discourse we encounter phrases calling for the defence of “traditional values” and the “Christian family” – an attitude usually extra-pronounced in ethnically uniformed countries. Recent developments in Bulgaria’s foreign policy added to this an extreme and flagrant homophobia.
In the already distant 2003, the torchlight procession by the name “Lukovmarch” seemed to be a harmless and at the same time somewhat supreme crown of the Transition’s creation. The initial impetus came from the entirely flattened, one-dimensional right-wing political life in Bulgaria that proved unable to hold together the onslaught of its own making. …
