Since the ‘migration crisis’ of 2016, long-simmering tensions between the Western members of the European Union and its ‘new’ Eastern members – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary – have proven to be fertile ground for rebellion against liberal values and policies. In this startling and original book Ivan Kalmar argues that Central European illiberalism is a misguided response to the devastating effects of global neoliberalism, which arose from the area’s brutal transition to capitalism in the 1990s. Kalmar argues that dismissive attitudes towards ‘Eastern Europeans’ are a form of racism and explores the close relation between racism towards Central Europeans and racism by Central Europeans: a people white but not quite.Populism in Central Europe is part of a world-wide response to neoliberal globalisation, whose disastrous effects determined the region’s brutal transition to capitalism. In this startling and original book Kalmar uses examples from popular culture to sport to reject as racist the idea that Central Europe’s cultures are incompatible with liberal democracy.