Date/Time: Thursday, May 19, 2022 / 15:00 (CET)
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Speaker: Professor Dr. Ruth Wodak
Discussant: Dr. Luke Cooper
Moderator: Maximilian Wolf
Ruth Wodak’s The Politics of Fear: The shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse — first published in 2015 and subsequently expanded in 2021 — is considered one of the most cogent studies of far-right discourse in the literature today. The book meticulously dissects the central discursive tools and communication strategies of the extreme right using a vast range of critical discourse analyses of the visual, rhetorical and performative aspects of populist right actors throughout Europe and the West. Beyond offering a cohesive introduction to the main aspects of populist logics of othering and exclusion, Politics of Fear draws clear links to the European far right’s ideological heritage in nationalism, anti-semitism, patriarchy and Neo-authoritarianism, and identifies how today’s new generation of right-wing actors continue to profit from transgressions of liberal democratic norms.
PROFESSOR DR. RUTH WODAK is Emeritus Distinguished Chair in Discourse Studies at the Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, as well as a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Vienna. A renowned scholar of populism and far-right politics, Wodak is credited as being one of the founders of Critical Discourse Analysis, and has authored and edited a whole range of articles, chapters and books on the structure, role and function of right-wing discourse in modern politics. Her Politics of Fear, the second edition of which came out in 2021, is considered a seminal contribution to the field of populism studies in general and the study of far-right discourse in particular.
DR. LUKE COOPER is a member of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science and co-host of the ‘Another Europe is Possible’ Podcast. He is the author, most recently, of Authoritarian Contagion, which appeared with Bristol University Press in 2021. His work focusses on nationalism, authoritarianism and British politics.
MAXIMILIAN WOLF, MPhil, is an intern at the European Center for Populism Studies. Maximilian was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. After receiving his BA in Politics at the University of Exeter (UK), he completed his MPhil in Political Sociology at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge (UK). His work has focussed on discourse analyses of both right- and left-wing populist phenomena, and an abridged version of his Master’s thesis, entitled Locating the Laclausian Left: Progressive Strategy and the Politics of Anxiety, has been accepted for publication in issue 3/2022 of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Populism (forthcoming). Besides ECPS, Maximilian now works for a governance think-tank in Vienna.
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