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IET open seminar “Discursive Shifts, the Far Right, and the Normalization of Politics Exclusion”, Tallinn University, 16^th of November, 2022 (16:00-17:30, M-648).

Michał Krzyżanowski, Uppsala University, Sweden.

Biography

Professor Michał Krzyżanowski holds the Chair in Media and Communication Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden, where he is currently Deputy Head at the School/Department of Informatics and Media as well as Director of Research at the Uppsala University’s Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR). He is one of the leading international scholars working on critical discourse studies of normalisation of politics of exclusion with special focus on European far right and other challenges to democracy in the context of global rise of right-wing populism and neoliberalism. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the international Journal of Language and Politics and a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies book series as well as sitting on a number of boards in various journals in critical discourse studies and wider qualitative social research. He is also widely known for his teaching of qualitative methods and critical discourse studies to students across social and political sciences and humanities across Europe, USA, China and Australia. He is also a recurrent convenor of widely attended classes in Critical Discourse Studies organised Methods Schools of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). More information:

Abstract

This presentation draws on my long-term work on nativist, anti-immigration and discriminatory discourses by far-right parties and in wider public spheres across Europe (Krzyżanowski & Wodak 2009; Krzyżanowski 2012; Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska 2022; Krzyżanowski & Ekström 2022; Wodak & Krzyżanowski 2017). Against the background of analyses conducted in, inter alia, Sweden, Poland and the UK, the paper takes a specifically critical-analytical look at ongoing, far-right driven responses to various ‘crises’ in general (Krzyżanowski et al 2023; Moffitt 2016) and to social, political and media responses to the recent ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe in particular (Krzyżanowski 2018a & 2018b; Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou & Wodak 2018). Looking specifically at the case of Poland, the paper shows that imaginaries of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ disseminated in political and media discourses in Poland have acted as very prominent catalysers and carriers of normalization of not only the unprecedented narratives of racism and hate but also of the deeper and wider change of public norms since 2015. I illustrate that the strategic and opportunistic introduction of anti-immigration rhetoric in/by the Polish political ‘mainstream’– and in particular by the main government party of Law and Justice (PiS) – has in the last few years contributed immensely to the dissemination as well as eventual acceptance of strongly discriminatory views in Poland. This, as I show, often took place while conflating the newly introduced discourses of racism and Islamophobia with other and often indeed long-standing traits of such discriminatory practices as, e.g., sexism, homophobia or anti-Semitism. Through the presentation, I aim to depict that normalization processes in question have been part and parcel of a wider multistep process of strategically orchestrated discursive shifts (Krzyżanowski 2018a, 2019, 2020a, 2020b). Therein, extremist discourses have been enacted, perpetuated and eventually normalised as elements of pronounced political strategies of politically profiting from the introduction of the wider politics of exclusion. However, the highlighted normalization processes have also entailed the creation of a specific, public borderline discourse (Krzyżanowski and Ledin 2017). Within the latter, civil, rational and politically correct language has been increasingly used to pre-legitimise (Krzyżanowski 2014, 2016) uncivil, radical and extremist positions and ideologies thus contributing to the formation of a wider, and in effect explicitly exclusionary and nativist ‘common sense’. 

The open seminar is organized by the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Life Course Studies (IET) and is funded by the European Union Regional Development Fund (ASTRA project "TLU TEE Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle").

References

Krzyżanowski, M. (2014). Values, Imaginaries and Templates of Journalistic Practice: A Critical Discourse Analysis. Social Semiotics 24(3).  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2016). Recontextualisations of Neoliberalism and the Increasingly Conceptual Nature of Discourse: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies. Discourse & Society 27(3).  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2018a). Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On Politicisation and Mediatisation of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Poland. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (1-2).  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2018b). ‘We Are a Small Country that Has Done Enormously Lot’: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ & the Hybrid Discourse of Politicising Immigration in Sweden. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (1-2).  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2019). ‘Brexit’ and the Imaginary of ‘Crisis’: A Discourse-Conceptual Analysis of European News Media. Critical Discourse Studies 16(2).  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2020a). Normalization and the Discursive Construction of ‘New’ Norms and ‘New’ Normality: Discourse in/and the Paradoxes of Populism and Neoliberalism. Social Semiotics 30:4,  

Krzyżanowski, M. (2020b). Discursive Shifts and the Normalisation of Racism: Imaginaries of Immigration, Moral Panics and the Discourse of Contemporary Right-Wing Populism. Social Semiotics 30:4

Krzyżanowski, M. & P. Ledin. (2017). Uncivility on the Web: Populism in/and the Borderline Discourses of Exclusion. Journal of Language & Politics 16(4).  

Krzyżanowski, M., A. Triandafyllidou & R. Wodak. (2018). The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (1-2).  

Krzyżanowski, M. & M. Ekström (2022). The Normalisation of (Right-Wing) Populism and Nativism Authoritarianism: Discursive Practices in Media, Journalism and the wider Public Sphere/s. Discourse & Society 33:6    

Krzyżanowski, M. & N. Krzyżanowska (2022). Narrating the ‘New Normal’? COVID-19 and Discursive Shifts in (Right-Wing) Populist Imaginary of Crisis as a Normalisation Strategy. Discourse & Society 33:6, Online first . 

Krzyżanowski, M., R. Wodak, H. Bradby, M. Gardell, A. Kallis, N. Krzyżanowska, C. Mudde, & J. Rydgren. (2023). De/Constructing the ‘New Normal’: Towards a Research Agenda on Crisis and the Normalization of Anti- & Post-Democratic Action. To appear in Journal of Language & Politics.    

Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

Wodak, R. & M. Krzyżanowski. (eds.). (2017). Right-Wing Populism in Europe & USA: Contesting Politics & Discourse beyond ‘Orbanism’ and ‘Trumpism’. (Special issue of Journal of Language & Politics 16:4). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.