Politics with Fear

YOUTUBE Premiere "From Kreisky's living room"

Politics with Fear
The shameless normalisation of far-right and right-wing populist discourse

Ruth Wodak has fundamentally revised her bestseller „Politics with Fear“ and incorporated the many developments of right-wing populist parties over the last five years.
What was unthinkable just a few years ago in terms of linguistic hooliganism, insulting and marginalising minorities and mendacity has now entered the mainstream and become „normalised“ in many cases. Hate and racism have become socially acceptable.
There is no longer any need to apologise for lies; bad behaviour is valued as an appealing, attractive means of protesting against so-called „elites“. All of this is linked to a „shift to the right“ of the political spectrum in many European countries (and beyond). Pluralist democracies are gradually being undermined.
Ruth Wodak discusses her observations and findings with Philipp Blom at the Bruno Kreisky Forum.

Ruth Wodak is a linguist and Emeritus Distinguished Professor for Discourse Studies at Lancaster University (UK) and remains affiliated with the University of Vienna, where she was appointed Full Professor of Applied Linguistics in 1991. In 2020, she was made an Honorary Senator of the University of Vienna. In addition to many other honours, she was the first woman and social scientist to receive the Wittgenstein Prize in 1996. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Örebro (Sweden, 2010) and Warwick (UK, 2020). She is a member of the Academia Europaea and the British Academy of Social Sciences. Ruth Wodak has worked intensively on identity and past politics, populism and political communication as well as prejudice research.

Philipp Blom studied philosophy, history and Jewish studies in Vienna and Oxford. He lives as a writer and historian in Vienna

Ruth Wodak: Politics with fear. The shameless normalisation of right-wing populist and right-wing extremist discourse
Completely revised edition, Edition Konturen, 336 pages, ISBN 978-3-902968-56-2