Across Europe and beyond, once-taboo rhetoric is entering the political mainstream, and hereby reshaping public discourse, policymaking, and democratic norms. In her keynote, Ruth Wodak will explore the phenomenon of “shameless normalization”: a process through which provocation, denial, and conspiracy theories are not just tolerated but strategically deployed by political actors to shift the limits of the sayable.

The keynote will examine how political communication increasingly relies on strategies of blame avoidance, victim-perpetrator reversal, and the erosion of truth. This coarsening of public dialogue, what some call “coarse civility”, is accompanied by growing hostility toward watchdog institutions, NGOs, and civil society actors who challenge authoritarian drift. Through concrete examples from EU institutions and national political arenas, including Austria’s far-right FPÖ, Ruth Wodak will trace how these discursive shifts contribute to a dangerous “new normal”, undermining democratic values, delegitimizing dissent, and closing space for civic engagement.

The event is an invitation to engage critically with these developments and their implications for European democracy.

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