This presentation attempts to theoretically and empirically contribute to the ongoing research on illiberalism, and specifically to its central focus on the middle ground of the democratic erosion continuum wherein deeply anti-democratic logics emerge and are furthered within (established) democracies. Drawing on my long-term work on nativist, anti-immigration and discriminatory discourses of far-right parties and wider public spheres across Europe, the paper takes a specifically critical-analytical look at far-right driven responses to various ‘crises’ in general and to social, political and media responses to the recent ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe in particular.
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 in recent years continuously acted as very prominent catalysers and carriers of normalization of not only the unprecedented narratives of discrimination and hate but also of the eventual, 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 discursive and discriminatory practices as, e.g., sexism, homophobia or anti-Semitism.
Through the presentation, I aim to depict that normalization processes in question have been embedded in a multistep process of strategically orchestrated discursive shifts. Therein, extremist discourses have been enacted, perpetuated and eventually normalised as elements of seemingly democratic political strategies making politics of exclusion into elements of social and political status quo. Similarly, the highlighted normalization processes have also entailed the creation of a specific, public borderline discourse. Within the latter, civil, rational and politically correct language has been increasingly used to pre-legitimise uncivil, radical and extremist positions and ideologies thus contributing to the formation of a wider, and in effect explicitly exclusionary and nativist ‘common sense’.
