Bulgaria’s media-driven pivot to right-wing populism parallels political developments taking place around the world. Martin Marinos applies a critical political economy approach to place Bulgarian right-wing populism within the structural transformation of the country’s media institutions. As Marinos shows, media concentration under Western giants like Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and News Corporation have led to a neoliberal turn of commercialization, concentration, and tabloidization across media. The Right have used the anticommunism and racism bred by this environment to not only undermine traditional media but position their own outlets to boost new political entities like the nationalist party Ataka. Marinos’s ethnographic observations and interviews with local journalists, politicians, and media experts add on-the-ground detail to his account. He also examines several related issues, including the performative appeal of populist media and the money behind it.

A timely and innovative analysis, Free to Hate reveals where structural changes in media intersect with right-wing populism.

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Social Justice Journalism and Cultural Enlightenment: Socialist Humanist Media After Stalin
2. Media and the Post-1989 Anti-Communist Hegemony
3. “The Language of the People”: The Tabloidization and Monopolization of the Post-Socialist Press
4. “Commercial Television with a Public Role”: Nationalism, Mediatized Social Responsibility and the Porous Border Between Political and Media Populism
5. Media Concentration and Right-Wing Populism’s Love/Hate Relationship with the Media
6. Labor, Money, and the “Populist” in Right-Wing Populist Media
Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index