In this powerful interview with ECPS, Professor Ruth Wodak warns that “autocracy has become a global economic corporation”—a transnational network where oligarchs, libertarians, and tech barons control discourse, distort truth, and undermine democracy. From Trump’s incitement of violence to Orbán’s fear-based migrant scapegoating, Professor Wodak outlines how authoritarian populists weaponize crises and social media to legitimize regressive policies. Yet she also defends the vital role of public intellectuals, urging them not to give in to “preemptive fear.” With deep insight into the politics of fear, techno-fascism, and discursive normalization, Professor Wodak’s reflections serve as both an alarm and a call to resistance in our increasingly volatile democratic landscape. A must-read for anyone grappling with today’s authoritarian turn.
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
In a time when liberal democracies are increasingly challenged by authoritarian populism, far-right, disinformation, and escalating political violence, the voice of critical scholars has never been more urgent. In this in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Ruth Wodak—Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, affiliated with the University of Vienna, and a member of the ECPS Advisory Board—provides a sobering assessment of our contemporary moment. With decades of pioneering work on discourse, racism, and the far right, Professor Wodak, who is also one of the signatories of the “International Declaration Against Fascism,” published on June 13, 2025, alongside Nobel laureates, public intellectuals, and leading scholars of democracy and authoritarianism, brings both scholarly rigor and moral clarity to an increasingly fraught public debate.
At the heart of this conversation lies a stark warning: “We are facing a kind of global kleptocracy and oligarchy that owns social media and is, in some cases, part of governments,” Professor Wodak says. Drawing on Anne Applebaum’s recent book Autocracy, Inc., she argues that autocracy has evolved into a global economic corporation—one where power, capital, and algorithmic control are intertwined and weaponized against democratic norms. This nexus, she explains, enables “very powerful individuals, libertarians, and oligarchs—supported by governments—to wield enormous influence.”
Professor Wodak also elaborates on what she calls the “politics of fear,” a strategy used by populist and authoritarian actors to exploit or fabricate crises in order to manufacture scapegoats and position themselves as national saviors. “It’s a very simple narrative,” she explains. “There is danger, someone is to blame, I am the savior, and I will eliminate the threat.” From Donald Trump’s MAGA slogan to Orbán’s anti-migrant rhetoric, such narratives are not only emotionally charged but “discursively effective in obscuring regressive agendas while appearing to restore order.”
The interview further explores how fascist traits—particularly state-sponsored or paramilitary violence—are resurfacing even in democratic societies. Professor Wodak points to cases in the United States, Germany, Turkey, and Greece as troubling examples. “We do see that the government in the US is taking very violent actions,” she warns, referring to ICE raids and militia-linked violence under Trump. Similarly, she notes how “Golden Dawn in Greece only became scandalized after the murder of a pop singer—despite its long history of violent attacks on migrants.”
Yet amid these challenges, Professor Wodak emphasizes the indispensable role of public intellectuals. Despite increasing hostility, she insists, “one shouldn’t be afraid to speak out.” Indeed, she urges scholars and citizens alike not to succumb to what she calls “preemptive fear,” which “leads you to accommodate to some kind of danger which you envision—but which is actually not there.”
In this urgent and wide-ranging dialogue, Professor Wodak offers a powerful analysis of how authoritarianism is being normalized—and how it can still be resisted.
Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Ruth Wodak, edited lightly for readability.
Fascist Rhetoric and Violence Are Reemerging Across Democracies
Professor Ruth Wodak, thank you so very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How do you interpret the contemporary resurgence of fascist traits in democratic societies, especially in light of the anti-fascism declaration you co-signed on June 13, 2025? In your view, what are the key discursive markers we should be most vigilant of, both conceptually and in concrete political communication? Could you provide some recent illustrative examples—from campaign speeches, media discourse, or policy debates—that exemplify these traits in action?
Professor Ruth Wodak: I think that’s a huge question. There are, unfortunately, many examples of what you explained just now and asked about. First, I would like to say that we should be careful when using the term fascism, because it always leads us to associate it with the 1930s, National Socialism, Mussolini, etc. So, we should be aware of what the main characteristics of fascism are, and one important point to mention is the existence of violence and paramilitary movements that support a fascist movement or government.
What we can observe right now is an increasing level of violence. For example, in the US, quite recently, there was violence in Los Angeles, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with the National Guard, were called in by President Trump to apprehend so-called illegal migrants and deport them to camps in El Salvador and other South American countries. These camps, in some ways, resemble concentration camps. Most surprisingly and disturbingly, Donald Trump had photos taken of himself at one such camp, appearing to be proud of these actions.
Now, when we think back just a few years—if you remember Charlottesville and the riots that took place there due to the attempt to remove the statue of a so-called hero of the Confederacy—the Proud Boys, a truly fascist movement of young, mainly male supporters, killed a young woman. Trump then said, “Well, actually, both the protesters and the Proud Boys were to be seen in an equal way.” So, we do see that currently the government in the US is taking very violent actions. These are still visible as snapshots—yes, they are localized in places like Los Angeles or elsewhere; they’re not yet covering the entire country. But of course, this could be a sign of what is to come. I think it’s very dangerous. And if you look back, you asked me about speeches and rallies—there was a speech by Trump where a protester entered the rally, and Trump just said, “Beat him up.” So, you can really also observe a rhetoric that orders or supports people to implement violence.
But this is not only the case in the US—it’s just a case we are all very aware of. If you look at Turkey, for example, where the Mayor of Istanbul was taken into prison, we again see violence enacted by the government. It’s not as if he was taken to court, there was a trial, and then democratic procedures were followed. No—this mayor was simply taken to prison, and as far as I know, nobody knows how long he will remain there. I depend on the media—you know much more about this.
We also saw violence—though again, very localized—in Germany, where there is no significant fascist mass movement that we can observe, except for very small groups of neo-Nazis and identitarians. But we do see assassinations and attacks on prominent politicians. There was an attack on a Social Democratic politician before the election. There are attacks on Green politicians. A mayor was actually shot. So, this is all very disconcerting.
Moreover, if we look back a little further—if you remember Golden Dawn, which was clearly a paramilitary fascist movement that was very strong in Greece around 2010 and a bit later—they enacted a great deal of violence against migrants. In fact, this only became widely scandalized when they killed a well-known Greek pop singer. Then, suddenly, it was talked about. But Golden Dawn had long used symbols of fascism, and so forth.
So, there is a trend that is leading up to the violence we see enacted today. And of course, I don’t even want to talk about Russia, because there, violence against protesters or opposition politicians has been ongoing for decades.
We’re Witnessing the Rise of Techno-Fascist Capitalism
The declaration highlights "techno-fascist enthusiasts" among media barons. How do you conceptualize the role of digital platforms and algorithmic governance in sustaining what you call the “politics of fear”?
Professor Ruth Wodak: First, let me explain what the politics of fear is about. It refers to how political groups or parties instrumentalize existing crises—or exaggerate them—and sometimes even create crises artificially through fake news and disinformation. They use these crises to construct scenarios of threat and fear—very dystopian visions of decay, collapse, and terrible events looming ahead.
Then, the leader of the party or group—because there are also women who do this—presents him or herself as the savior. So, there is a kind of link: on the one hand, creating a fearful scenario, and on the other, projecting a vision or utopia where the savior will rescue the country and eliminate those deemed responsible for the crisis.
This strategy also involves the creation of scapegoats, because someone must be blamed—someone must be guilty of the major problems that exist. The identity of these scapegoats depends on the context. Sometimes they are Turks and migrants, sometimes Jews and Roma. It all depends on who is available to be constructed as the scapegoat.
In this way, the narrative becomes very simple: there is danger, someone is to blame, I am the savior, and I will eliminate the threat—then everything will be fine.
It’s a very simple narrative and a very simple argument. But many people who are currently very insecure—because of the polycrisis we are all experiencing—seem to be easily manipulated into believing such a narrative.
And now we come to social media, which plays a very big role in this manipulation and in this propaganda. If we think of the big social media networks—for example, X—and Elon Musk, who is obviously the richest man on earth, we have someone who owns such a vast platform and who can actually manipulate the content.
In this way, dangerous content and disinformation are widely distributed, while evidence and factual counter-narratives are either deleted or not distributed—or at least distributed far less. Beyond that, there are also trolls and bots who amplify this content even further. So the whole—I would say—secondary discourse world of social media is saturated with disinformation.
There isn’t enough counter-information. We do now have Bluesky, for example, which tries to counter X—quite successfully in some ways. Many people have switched from X to Bluesky as a form of protest. But still, X remains more powerful because it is backed by an enormous amount of money.
In that way, I would say, power and money are going hand in hand right now in a really unpredictable way. We haven’t experienced something like this for a long time. I would point to the Russian oligarchs after 1989—but that was more localized. Now we are facing a kind of global kleptocracy and oligarchy that owns social media and is, in some cases, part of governments.
I would also mention a recent and very interesting book by Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.—yes, “the corporation.” So autocracy has become a big economic corporation, because power is now linked to money and to specific groups of libertarians, very powerful individuals, and oligarchs who are supported by governments and who wield enormous power.
Fear of Losing Control and Status Fuels the Far Right’s Rise
The declaration refers to fabricated enemies and the weaponization of security. How have right-wing populist actors used crisis narratives (e.g., migration, pandemics) to justify authoritarian measures?
Professor Ruth Wodak: We see that happening all the time. I mean, migration has become such an important agenda in this construction of fear. And looking at recent EU barometers, it’s actually quite interesting that other topics also generate a lot of fear but are not instrumentalized in the same way. The statistics show us that, for example, the fear of the cost-of-living crisis, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, and the fear of wars—yes, we have, for the first time since the 1990s and the Yugoslavian wars, a war very close to or even within Europe, namely Ukraine—all of that could also be talked about extensively and used to create fear. But it seems to be migration that is, for the far right, the so-called best agenda to be instrumentalized. And that is the case across the board. I mean, I cover especially the Austrian and German debates, but I also follow the French and British debates.
I just read The Guardian yesterday, where there were reports of anti-foreigner riots in Manchester and another city in the north of England, and I was really disturbed—because, as you know, I’ve lived in the UK for 12 years in the North, and I had never encountered anything like that. I mean, there’s xenophobia everywhere, yes, but to have these riots, which were triggered by far-right groups—this is really very scary in the UK.
And again, if you look at Austria, the extreme right, far-right party—the Austrian Freedom Party—has been leading the polls since 2022 and won the last national election. They are not in government, but right now they are still leading the polls. Their main agenda is constructing the fear of migrants, and it’s really a paradox because, on the one hand, it’s obvious that in all European countries—or all countries of the European Union—specialist workers and people with expertise in various professions are needed. There are special ways of allowing them to enter the various countries—special permits and so on—and, on the other hand, this fear of migration still seems to resonate strongly.
We have to ask why the construction of this scapegoat is so successful. And it’s especially—and again, not only—targeted at Muslim migrants. Because this fear of migrants has already been a huge manipulative device, so to speak, since as early as 1989. If you recall the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989—the end of the so-called Eastern Bloc—you’ll remember that many people from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland entered the West—yes, the so-called West. The Freedom Party in Austria, and especially Jörg Haider—who was quite a charismatic and very clever rhetorician—constructed his entire agenda against foreigners and became very successful.
And that was not during a time of crisis. There was no economic crisis at that time. We did a big study back then, and we found that the discursive patterns used at that time are very similar to those used now—except that at the time, the migrants were white Christian people, and now we have Muslims coming from Syria, Iraq, or elsewhere as refugees. But basically, the discourse of exclusion is very similar.
And if you ask yourself what triggers this enormous fear, I think there are basically two—possibly many more—but two really important points. One is the fear of losing control, which has become salient in the context of the polycrisis, but was also very visible during the Brexit campaign. So, the fear of losing control—because so many people are coming—and then you don’t know what’s happening anymore. The slogan at that time in the UK, “Take back control,” was very successful.
The second big issue is the fear of losing your social welfare—all the benefits, your jobs—they will take things away. So you haven’t lost them yet, but you might lose out. It’s not just the people who have already lost out, as is often discussed. It’s the fear among the middle class and the lower middle class of losing their status, their benefits, their way of living. That also explains why, for example, in very rich countries like Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden, the far right is so prominent.
Authoritarianism Thrives on Silence; Intellectuals Must Refuse It
The open letter evokes the historical memory of anti-fascist intellectuals in 1925. How do you see the role of public intellectuals and discourse scholars today in resisting what you have termed “shameless normalization”?
Professor Ruth Wodak: I think it’s a hard job, and it really is difficult to summarize—or even observe—what impact public intellectuals might have, because they are, of course, part of the elite—the so-called elite—that the far right is fundamentally campaigning against. So public intellectuals form a group that is not wanted by the far right.
That said, it’s really important that people speak out. And the more people do so—and are listened to, and their voices are heard in social media, newspapers, and so forth—the more others become aware that there is a different position, a counter-discourse. I believe that to be very important, even if it isn’t widely distributed by platforms like X or other major channels.
So the more people speak out, the better it is—and one shouldn’t be afraid of doing so. Of course, this really depends on where you live. If you are in a dictatorship or a classically authoritarian state, public intellectuals may have a very hard time—they might be imprisoned, as has happened, or even killed, as we see in countries like Russia or China. And if we look at Turkey, they are imprisoned—just like many journalists—so they are forced into exile and speak out from abroad.
But if you live in a country that still allows freedom of opinion and supports human rights and the Human Rights Charter, then it is even more important to speak out—because you have the right to do so. And you shouldn’t be afraid.
Personally, I’ve never been afraid to speak out. Of course, I’ve encountered a lot of opposition. I’m not liked by everyone—but I tell myself, I don’t have to be loved by everybody. I also see many colleagues in the US or in Germany who speak out—not only at conferences and in academic settings, but who also leave the ivory tower and engage with the public, speak in schools or wherever they’re invited.
And I believe that it’s very important not to be frightened preemptively, especially in countries where freedom of opinion exists, where you don’t have to fear imprisonment or worse. There’s no reason to silence yourself out of imagined fear. Preemptive fear is dangerous, because it makes you accommodate to a threat that you envision—but which may not actually be there.
So in that way, I encourage scholars and intellectuals who are able to speak out—to do so.
Slogans Like MAGA Obscure Regressive Agendas Through Nostalgia
How would you analyze the role of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” narrative and the narratives of Erdoğan, Putin, Netanyahu, Modi, Orban etc.—not just rhetorically but also in terms of its affective and mobilizing power? What makes such slogans so resonant across diverse audiences, and how do they function discursively to both obscure and legitimate regressive political agendas?
Professor Ruth Wodak: These slogans—and I would say these are really slogans—
MAGA, for example, resonates because, as I already said, many people are afraid and feel insecure—legitimately so—because there are existential crises right now. And these slogans construct a past that seems to have been much better. I say "seems" because it never was much better. There were always problems, always crises, etc.
We once conducted a study that looked at all the crises the European Union had experienced up until 2009, and it clearly showed a continuity of crises. There were always crises, so you could say the EU was essentially moving from one crisis to the next.
It’s basically what Bauman calls "retrotopia"—a fantasy, an imaginary past that is perceived as better. Now, we can think about what Trump actually—or what he might—mean when pointing to such a past. And it’s quite obvious that the past being invoked might be the period before the civil rights movement—a time when traditional gender roles were still enforced, when there was no political correctness, and so forth.
So, a past that some people would really like to return to, or at least evoke again. But of course, this is impossible. We cannot turn the clock back, and in that sense, it remains a complete fantasy or imaginary. Yet it resonates—because there is so much nostalgia. There is nostalgia, there is a lot of anger, and there is also, as Eva Illouz puts it, a lot of love and patriotism. This imaginary—where "we all were together" in some kind of imagined white community in the US, where all these values were still upheld—resonates strongly.
The same applies, of course, in other contexts, where one has to look at the specific historical elements that are being invoked.
Meloni’s Soft Fascism Balances Between Brussels and Trump
And lastly, Professor Wodak, you’ve researched the discourse of the European far right extensively. How would you compare the current discourse strategies of far-right and populist actors in Austria or Hungary with those in the United States, Turkey, or India?
Professor Ruth Wodak: I have not researched Turkey and India extensively, because I don’t speak the languages. And it is, of course, for us as linguists and discourse analysts, always important to look at the original texts—visual, written, oral—because we need to understand all the nuances, the intonation, the latent meanings, and so forth. So translation is not enough.
But if I now speak about what is reported, what I can read about, and if I look—as I already cited examples from the US—there is a difference between these authoritarian or neo-authoritarian countries and the still liberal democracies.
So, for example, if we look at Italy, where Giorgia Meloni is leading the government and comes from a fascist movement which she claims to have left completely, we see an example of soft fascism. She balances between the EU—she is still also a friend of Trump—but she wants the EU funds to continue, so she negotiates in a nice way with von der Leyen and with the European People’s Party. She is for Ukraine and against Russia, and so forth. So there are many interesting positions. But in the actual domestic policies in Italy, her party attacks journalists. There are attacks on press freedom, freedom of opinion, freedom of assembly, and so forth.
However, civil society in Italy is very strong, so this is also being resisted. And this marks a difference—at least in some ways—from Hungary, where Orbán has really implemented an authoritarian state. But there too, civil society and the opposition are now growing. So it’s not clear what will happen in the elections next year, because there is a conservative opposition party led by Magyar, which has been leading the polls for several months.
And if we look at Austria and Germany again, this kind of explicit, violent speech would not be possible—or at least, when it occurs, it is scandalized. Certain politicians might say such things, but they are often suspended from their parties, especially if they make statements that invoke the fascist past. There are strict laws against that, and those laws are enforced. You cannot use these symbols or rhetoric freely.
Whereas—and this marks a major difference from the US—Trump openly violates such laws, human rights norms, and taboos, and yet there is comparatively little opposition—not the kind we see here. So I think the difference lies in EU legislation and national contexts, where violence and the breaking of taboos are still scandalized, prohibited, and prosecuted—unlike in countries where the government can break these taboos and act unlawfully, and it seems everything goes.
