How did the normalization of xenophobic and populist rhetoric take place and how have various governments contributed to its rise?
About this Event
Right-wing politics have entered the mainstream of European and American societies. But this is not a trend that began with Brexit or Trump. How did the normalization of xenophobic and populist rhetoric take place? How have various governments contributed to its rise? Does it pose a challenge to the future of liberal democracies?
These are questions we will be exploring with expert panellists who have carefully studied and written on this subject. Between them they bring a variety of angles including the use of language and the media, globalization, modes of governance and social attitudes. This is a free virtual event and a live Q&A session will be open to attendees at the end of the discussion.
Speakers
Ruth Wodak is Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, and affiliated to the University of Vienna. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996, an Honorary Doctorate from University of Örebro in Sweden in 2010, and an Honorary Doctorate from Warwick University in 2020. She is a member of the British Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the Academia Europaea. In March 2020, she became Honorary Member of the Senate of the University of Vienna. She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies, and Language and Politics. She is author of the award-winning book, The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse.
Barrie Axford is Professor Emeritus in politics at Oxford Brookes University, where he was founding director of the Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society (GPES). He researches global theory, processes of globalization and the mediatization of politics. He has published widely in refereed journals and has written, co-authored and edited nineteen books. Translations of his work have appeared in Mandarin, Turkish, Persian, Russian and Hindi. Among his single-authored books are The Global System: Economics, Politics and Culture, Theories of Globalization, The World-Making Power of New Media: Mere Connection? and Populism Versus the New Globalization.
Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse and the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies. His first book, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?, was published in 2013 and he recently co-edited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech published with Zed. His new book Reactionary democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, is now out with Verso.
Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of East London. His research is on the far-right with a focus on racism, mainstreaming and violence. He is co-editor of Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism (Routledge 2018) and Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (Routledge 2020), and co-author with Aurelien Mondon, of Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream (Verso 2020). He is also on the editorial board of Identities and co-editor of the Manchester University Press (MUP) book series Racism, Resistance and Social Change.