The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean

About this book

Winner of the Austrian Book Prize for the 2016 German translation in the category of Humanities and Social Sciences. Populist right-wing politics is moving centre-stage with some parties reaching the very top of the electoral ladder: but do we know why and why now? In this book Ruth Wodak traces the trajectories of such parties from the margins of the political landscape to its centre to understand and explain how they are transforming from fringe voices to persuasive political actors who set the agenda and frame media debates. Laying bare the normalization of nationalistic xenophobic racist and antisemitic rhetoric she builds a new framework for this politics of fear that is entrenching new social divides of nation gender and body. The result reveals the micro-politics of right-wing populism: how discourses genres images and texts are performed and manipulated in both formal and also everyday contexts with profound consequences. This book is a must-read for scholars and students of linguistics media and politics wishing to understand these dynamics that are re-shaping our political space.